Embracing Weakness

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Shannon K. Evans. Embracing Weakness

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“Shannon Evans’ tender and honest book reminds us all to put first things recognizably first. Find in this book a way to return to a loving way of life, exquisite mutuality, and a renewed sense of service that allows us to be reached by the poor. This book helps you … to be in the world who God is.”

— Father Greg Boyle, SJ, founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention program in the world, and author of Tattoos on the Heart and Barking to the Choir

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If my testimony of the gospel revolves around a plotline of, “I used to struggle with this, but God gave me the victory and now I’m free/healed/saved/fill in the blank,” I have immediately distanced myself from the listener of my testimony by implying that I have arrived in a place where they are not. No doubt we do find freedom, healing, and salvation in Christ — and want that for others, too — but the reality continues to be that we ourselves are also in process. The power of the gospel is not that we no longer suffer or struggle, but that we no longer do so alone.

The Second Person of the Trinity stepped in to recorded history to relate intimately with humankind, so that in his willingness to share our lived experience he might gain our trust. This has to be the pattern of our efforts at evangelization and of any ministry we undertake. Can another person really trust us if we are not willing to bare our own weaknesses while prying into theirs? Are we, in our efforts of evangelization, asking something of the other that we ourselves are not ready to extend first?

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