Our Daily Bread: Called to ServeSample

The Price of Involvement

My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness, so that the power of Christ can work through me. —2 Corinthians 12:9

While making his landmark documentary about World War II, filmmaker Ken Burns and his colleagues watched thousands of hours of military footage. Scenes of the devastating Battle of Peleliu often invaded their dreams at night. Burns told Sacramento Bee reporter Rick Kushman, “You’re listening to the ghosts and echoes from an almost inexpressible past. If you do that, you put yourself into the emotional maelstrom.”

There’s a price to becoming involved in the struggles of others. Paul experienced this in his work of sharing the gospel: “Then, besides all this, I have the daily burden of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my feeling that weakness? Who is led astray, and I do not burn with anger?” (2 Corinthians 11:28–29).

Oswald Chambers, a chaplain to British troops in World War I, said we enter this spiritual struggle as we “deliberately identify ourselves with God’s interests in other people” and “find to our amazement that we have power to keep wonderfully poised in the center of it all.”

Paul realized that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). Jesus paid the greatest price to be involved in our world, and He strengthens us as we share His love with others.  

David McCasland

If we obey God’s calling, He will provide the needed strength.