Flowers and faith

“How long will I have to put up with your lack of faith?” Jesus asked His disciples this morning while I was reading. Ouch. That hurt. So Jesus expects us to have faith. My defensive soul was stung. “Be strong. Act like men,” Paul said to the Corinthians later on in my reading. That did it.

But I am not a man, I said, so how can I act like one. Don’t you remember Peter called us women weaker vessels?

My thoughts drifted back to a conference where the speaker had mentioned this passage (I like the Italian version better than English; instead of “weaker vessels” it says women are “more delicate vases;” is the fact that I don’t like being called weaker a sign of my sensitive skin?). “Women have more of a problem with fear,” he had told us. I know fear, even if I don’t always admit it. “They need to take it to their husbands and let them help.” The other single girls and I had looked at each other, struggling not to feel bitterly like self-centered old maids upset at being overlooked. But who had been able to help thinking, and what about us?

I wandered into the kitchen. Maybe another chocolate muffin and cup of coffee would give me strength. Two irises stood in a vase, their new home after my mother found them outside with their stems broken. The last few days the wind has reminded us of why it is famous in Oklahoma, and flower petals litter the yard. I leaned over to smell them, their fragrance the perfect match for fragile white petals fringed with lavender.

You are delicate too, I murmured. How do you manage?

Think of the lilies of the field. Your heavenly father knows what they need. How much more will He care for you, oh you of little faith?

I munched my muffin and thought. We are all vessels. Jars of clay. But we have this power in broken vessels to show that it is from God, and not from us. The more delicately fragile I am, the more others can see him shining through my weakness. But first I have to let myself be filled; I have to have faith.