Trolleys

On my study wall is a picture of a trolley bus that someone gave me for a present.  It is from my home town and I can never look at it without casting a smiling thought back to what, at the time were quite miserable experiences.  I thought of them too when, in Salzburg last summer, we travelled on the city's trolleybuses (below) but they seemed a world away from the ones I remember.

 

I remember them because, quite simply, they were almost useless.  The number of things that could go wrong were amazing.  In addition to all the usual hazards of a busy town's roads and bus system they added

 

A) the ability to get stuck at junctions that dislodged the contact poles because of joins in the wiring

B) losing the power contact when overtaking too wide when vehicles were parked

C) not being able to continue for fear of B)

D) just losing contact for no apparent reason

E) losing power when the wires themselves came town because of weather etc.

F) getting stuck behind another trolley bus that could not progress because of A) - D)

 

The picture on my wall is drawn as if from the kerbside and this is very apt because walking onwards along the path leaving looking back at the trolley bus at just that angle was a childhood experience that is etched on the memory.

 

Maybe it helps to understand how we relate to God though.  No human life is as free as a vehicle that can go anywhere; our times are in his hands.  No human life is as regimented as the tram that can only follow a rail.  We are free, but if we use our freedom to move from him we become redundant very quickly.

 

 

 

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 4: I will strengthen thee

But we thank God that his presence is not a passive presence.  It’s an active presence.  And in addition to promising his presence he now promises his power.  He says, “Fear thou not for I am with thee.  Be not dismayed for I am thy God.  I will strengthen thee”.  He promises them power, power to strengthen them.

Now remember that the people to whom this prophecy was aimed were people that had been in captivity.  Obviously 70 years of captivity had considerably weakened them.  They didn’t feel like a fighting force at all.  But that didn’t matter because the Lord was able to strengthen them in their weakness.  You remember the words we read at the end of Chapter 40, in verse 29, concerning our God; ‘He giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.’

You see, there is no shortage of strength on God’s part.  He is the everlasting God, creator of the ends of the earth.  He fainteth not, neither is weary.  Therefore he is able to give power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

Now it goes without saying that for many of us here we do not have the strength that we had just a few years ago.  We recognise that our physical strength has been declining.  Well, if we’re honest, we wonder what we shall be like in December 2013, in a year’s time.  We feel weaker now than a year ago, what will we feel like after another year?  Perhaps that fills us with just a little bit of dread and wonder.  Well, it need not do because although we may decline in our physical strength and feel our increasing physical weakness, we can hear our God saying he gives power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

The apostle Paul experienced this personally, didn’t he?  Remember the verses we read in the beginning of our worship.  Paul had been suffering with a thorn in the flesh.  We don’t quite know what that was but it was evidently some kind of spiritual weakness and Paul was so distressed by this that he besought the Lord to remove it.  Three times he prayed that the Lord would take it away, but the Lord didn’t.  Instead he answered Paul with those words, “My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness.”  Therefore Paul was able to rejoice and go on to say, “When I am weak, then am I strong”.  He knew that though he was weak outwardly, he could be strong inwardly, filled with might by God’s Spirit in the inner man.

That can be our experience, dear friends, in 2013.  We may, and will probably, feel our increasing physical weaknesses but we need not become spiritually weak.  As we keep close to the Lord, as we trust in him and believe his Word, he will empower us by the indwelling Holy Spirit so that we shall be empowered inwardly though we are weakened physically and outwardly.