For All Who Feel Weak and Fragile
My son has started vlogging, because there’s nothing else to do at college, right? But what a gift to this momma, who is at the tip-top of Montana while her boy is in central Texas. His Youtube videos give me a glimpse into his life every week, and he makes me smile.
Recently, Caleb asked his subscribers to sign up for his email list, so of course I did. That’s what moms do.
On the email sign-up, a screen appeared that said, “I am not a robot.” I clicked on the box, and evidently that was a satisfactory response.
My husband signed up for the emails as well. Then he texted our boy: “I am not a robot.” Maybe he thought Caleb needed extra reassurance that his dad is a person.
The sentence sticks in my mind, and I say it to myself in the wee hours of the morning.
I am not a robot.
Let me steal from Shakespeare, in The Merchant of Venice, to say that I have hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, and passions. I am fed with food, hurt with weapons, subject to diseases, healed, and am warmed and cooled by winter and summer.
If you prick me, I will bleed.
It comes to mind, as I think of my own humanity, that Jesus is not a robot either. God did not send a machine to save us. Because Jesus took on flesh, we get a special kind of rescue.
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death–that is the devil–and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15 NIV)
Hasn’t it been a crazy season of fires and earthquakes and hurricanes? I put a picture of a hurricane on the board yesterday and asked my Spanish students to chat about it. They asked, “Which hurricane is it?”
Which one?
Makes a person feel awfully human and fragile.
It’s very comforting, in the middle of all of these catastrophes, to hear that Jesus shared our humanity. Jesus knows how it feels to live as a human in this world. He completely understands our emotional and physical vulnerabilities.
When the news is terrifying, I challenge you to meditate on this truth: Jesus is not a robot. What does this mean for you?