Everybody wants it.
In today’s world courage is often linked to Heroics. We think of an individual who puts their life on the line to valiantly save another. But the courage I’m talking about is ordinary courage. It’s the courage that puts our vulnerability on the line.
In our world that is so shame driven that we are unconscious to it, hussle for worthiness goes to a whole other level at Christmas time.
Ordinary Courage is putting your hand up in class & saying “I’m lost. I don’t understand.” Ordinary Courage is saying “I don’t know”, “I am not ready yet to take on that aspect of the job, I am still needing time to learn this one.”
These are some of the bravest things we can ever say & do.
Ordinary courage is willing to risk being disappointed & it is willing to risk trusting again. Ordinary courage confronts suspicion & moves past it with faith, choosing uncertainty & honor rather than the barren bastions of control & predictable outcomes.
Ordinary courage is one of the most frequent commands in the Bible, used over 300 times in the bible.
But courage is never courage without vulnerability. Think of a time when you were courageous. Could you be courageous & not be vulnerable? When this question was asked recently to the highest level Military Generals & Commanders at West Point in the USA, they could not think of any occasion when courage did not demand vulnerability from them or their troops.
Courage is risk. It challenges our notions of control & our emotion of fear. So does vulnerability.
Dr Brene Brown says. “It is our inability to feel vulnerability that makes us weak.” The Hebrew word for courage is chazaq & it means “to show oneself strong”. Strong is not armouring up with emotionless perfection to ‘get her done!’. To show ourselves strong is show our hearts, our true selves. This is ordinary courage & it in turn demands in us compassion & empathy, the twin arms of fierce fearless love.
2000 years ago, compassion moved heaven not judgement & courage walked the earth. Jesus bearing the heart of God for connection, showed himself strong with the might of courage’s true measure, vulnerability, & conquered the world.
God is birthing a whole new revelation of grace & love. And it will be wrapped in the arms of ordinary courage. You have it.
Live Courage.
