Power is a tenuous thing.  Although many people believe they have it, I wonder whether they ever realize that they have it not necessarily because of who they are or what they can do, but because the world is such that the quest for power is inevitable.  In this fallen and compromised world, power becomes, oddly enough, that for which all of us in some way strive.  Power is how we survive.

     So were we made to seek power, as Friedrich Nietzsche once insisted?  I do not believe we are.  We're made to give up power, to seek the greater good of the world and not merely our own welfare.  We're made to use what we have to better the human community.
     In the twelfth chapter of his second letter to the church at Corinth, Paul describes how he prayed and prayed that Jesus would remove what he called "a thorn in the flesh" (we're not told precisely what this "thorn" is).
     "My power," Jesus responds, "is made complete/perfected in weakness."  It is when we are at our weakest that God's power shines in us most fully.  But what's God's power?  For the last week or so I've been dealing with a running injury.  It's been tough.  Yet when I think about God's power in my situation, I do not think about it solely in terms of physical strength.  I think about it in regard to the extent to which it has forced me to step back and think about life in a way that I had not before.  Yes, I want to recover, and yes, I want to run again--and I believe I will.  But had I not had to give up, for a season, my physical power, I would not have experienced the deeper perspective that comes from the weakness that doing so brings.
     And it is this deeper perspective, this broader and richer purview of an existence purposed and occasioned by a wise and loving God, that, in the long run, becomes the greatest power of all.