When I Am Weak, Then Strength Comes - The One Year Book of Amish Peace

When I Am Weak, Then Strength Comes

Those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31

When do you feel the strongest? For me, it’s not when I have someone giving me a helping hand, but when I’m offering help or hope to others. Sometimes I’ve been completely weary, and then someone—a child, a friend, a neighbor—asked for help. My first inclination has been to decline, but I’ve discovered that when God’s strength flows through me to help another person, I benefit. This is true in the Amish community, too:

Intrigued. That’s the word to describe how Dr. Bryan Cloyd, Professor of Accounting at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, felt when he learned that a busload of Amish from Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, was coming to honor the victims of the April 2007 school shootings. Dr. Cloyd’s only daughter, Austin, age eighteen, was one of thirty-two victims who lost their lives in the rampage. . . .

The purpose of the Amish visit was to bring the Comfort Quilt to Virginia Tech. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, a school in Ohio created a simple patchwork quilt for children whose parents had been killed in the attacks. A school in New Jersey hung the quilt, and there it stayed—until four years later, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The Comfort Quilt was sent to a school in Mississippi that had taken in many displaced New Orleans students. When the Nickel Mines School shooting occurred, the Comfort Quilt moved again . . . this time to bring comfort to the Amish families of Nickel Mines. After the Virginia Tech tragedy, the Amish made a decision that the quilt should be moved again.

Those who delivered the quilt were the very ones who had lost their daughters in the Nickel Mines shooting. Instead of allowing their weary grief to burden them, they spread hope to others who had recently faced tragedy.

You can find the same to be true. When you give out of your weariness, not only will you help others, but also God will strengthen you in the process.

Dear heavenly Father, when I’m weakest, the last thing I want is to give. But I know that when You flow through me, I also benefit!