The world admires strength and hides weakness. The Bible turns that upside down. God told Paul, "My power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9), and Paul learned to say, "When I am weak, then I am strong."
These three stories about strength in weakness, retold in our own words, come from a piece of rope, a baseball star in a wheelchair and a civil rights leader at the end of his rope one night in Montgomery.
Stories in this collection:
- Why a Rope Is Stronger Than Its Strands
- Roy Campanella and the Prayer on the Hospital Wall
- Martin Luther King's Midnight Prayer at the Kitchen Table
Why a Rope Is Stronger Than Its Strands
Did you know that a rope is stronger than the combined strength of all the strands that make it up? How can that be?
The answer is surprisingly simple. Every individual strand of fibre has weak spots along its length, points where it is likely to break. On its own, a strand fails at its weakest point.
But when many strands are twisted together into a rope, their weak spots are scattered randomly along its length. The twist of the rope means that, wherever one strand is weak, the strands around it are strong, and they take up the strain. The weaknesses of the individual fibres are covered by the strength of the others.
It is the same with people. All of us have strengths and weaknesses. On our own, our weaknesses can break us. But woven together in community, we can bear far more than any of us could alone.
Takeaway: People are like that. Alone, our weak spots can break us. Woven together in community, other people's strengths cover our weaknesses. "A cord of three strands is not quickly broken" (Ecclesiastes 4:12).
Source: Based on scientific information reported in New Scientist.
Roy Campanella and the Prayer on the Hospital Wall
Roy Campanella was one of the first African American players in Major League Baseball, and one of the greatest catchers the game has known. Playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he won the National League's Most Valuable Player award three times, and in 1955 he helped the Dodgers win their first World Series.
But in January 1958 his career came to a sudden end. His car skidded on an icy road and crashed, and the accident left him paralysed. He would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
During his long rehabilitation at the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in New York, Campanella is said to have stopped one day to read a plaque on one of the walls. For a man who had been blessed with such remarkable athletic gifts, its words struck deep.
The words are from an anonymous poem sometimes called "A Creed for Those Who Have Suffered", often said to have been written by an unknown soldier in the American Civil War. Its origin is uncertain, but its words, now in the public domain, run like this:
"I asked God for strength, that I might achieve; I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey. I asked for health, that I might do greater things; I was given infirmity, that I might do better things. I asked for riches, that I might be happy; I was given poverty, that I might be wise. I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men; I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life; I was given life, that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I had hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all men, most richly blessed."
Campanella went on to live an active life for decades, coaching young players, speaking and working with the Dodgers. His story became a testimony that weakness need not be the end of a meaningful life.
Takeaway: Sometimes God answers our deepest prayers by refusing our surface ones. Weakness can open doors that strength never could.
Source: Anonymous nineteenth-century poem; Scott Higgins, drawing on Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Martin Luther King's Midnight Prayer at the Kitchen Table
Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of tremendous courage. He endured vilification, beatings, imprisonment and constant death threats. His home was bombed, and in 1968 he was assassinated. What kept him going? Much of the answer lies in one night early in his ministry.
In December 1955, at just 26 years old, King was chosen to lead the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama. As well as terrifying threats from the Ku Klux Klan, he faced harassment from the police. In January 1956 he was arrested for driving a few miles an hour over the speed limit and spent time in jail for the first time.
Not long afterwards, late one night, the phone rang at his home. A menacing voice, using a racial slur, told him that they were tired of him, and that if he did not leave town within three days they would kill him and blow up his house. Threats like that had been coming constantly, but that night, King later said, it got to him.
He was shaken and afraid, for himself, for his wife Coretta and for their baby daughter. Unable to sleep, he went into the kitchen, made a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. He thought about his little girl and how she could be taken from him at any moment. He thought about his devoted wife asleep in the next room. He tried to think of a way to step back from the leadership without looking like a coward. He felt he could not take it any more. He was weak.
King later described that moment as the time when faith had to become real to him, when he had to know God for himself. He bowed his head over his cup of coffee and prayed aloud. He told God that he was trying to do what was right, and that he believed the cause was right. But he confessed that he was weak, that he was faltering and losing his courage, and that he had nothing left.
Then, King said, it seemed as if he could hear an inner voice telling him to stand up for righteousness, for justice and for truth, and promising that God would be with him to the end of the world. He sensed the presence of Jesus telling him to keep fighting, and promising never to leave him alone. His fears, he said, began to melt away.
A few nights later, on 30 January 1956, the threat came true. A bomb exploded on the front porch of the King home. Mercifully, no one was hurt. King said that the experience at the kitchen table a few nights earlier had given him the strength to face it.
Time and again, through years of danger and opposition, Martin Luther King returned to that midnight prayer. It was in his weakness, not his strength, that he found the courage to carry on.
Takeaway: Admitting weakness to God is not failure. It is often the moment strength begins. "I am with you always" (Matthew 28:20).
Source: Martin Luther King Jr.'s own accounts in later sermons and in Stride Toward Freedom (1958).
Final thoughts
A rope, a prayer on a hospital wall and a cup of coffee at midnight. Each story says the same surprising thing: weakness, honestly faced and placed in God's hands, can become the place where real strength is found.
For further reading, Sopranu reviews Laura Story's When God Doesn't Fix It, about finding faith when weakness and loss do not go away.
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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