Lenten Daily Reflection 2020-03-26
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.
Did someone check my Enneagram before assigning me this passage? We Enneagram Ones (Reformers) have such a hard time accepting the different giftings and roles that make up the Body. My goodness, if only we were all Enneagram Ones, we would have color-coded to-do lists, remember birthdays, and "flatten the COVID-19 curve" so efficiently that we'd be back to taking the subway in no time. Sure, it'd be great! Sometimes. But without other parts of the Body working in different ways as part of a whole, there would also be a lot less patience, a lot less laughter. A lot less grace. A lot less perspective-taking.
I still struggle to appreciate the different parts of the Body that suffer together, rejoice together. Mostly, I suspect that's because if I don't do something, it doesn't get done at all. I had to put all of that aside when we welcomed our daughter in 2018 and realized appreciate others. Before Elizabeth was born, I'd sorted out a plan that (on paper) allowed me to tackle work, school, and parenthood all at once. It all seemed so perfect, until the first week of the semester when eight-week-old Elizabeth spent two hours with the sitter, inconsolable while I sat in class. It was all I could do not to burst into tears with each incoming text message while pretending to take notes.
I was so hard on myself and questioned if any of this was worth doing. Elizabeth would resent me for spending time away from her! I should quit everything! Never leave the house again! Man, during that season I got a foretaste of how miserable it would be if we were all alike. I needed other parts of the Body with the faithfulness to affirm ways in which God had chosen me, specifically, to be Elizabeth's mother, and that He would equip me. I needed others to put into words profound insights about the nature of God and the Church that my post-partum brain could not compose on its own. When I was experiencing so many types of weakness, I didn't need fellow perfectionists with to-do lists to match mine. For once, I appreciated the need to suffer and rejoice together.