Lamebrains, Fools and Apostles

“We are fools for Christ’s sake,” Paul says in the first letter to the Corinthians. God is foolish, too, Paul says. God is foolish to choose for his holy work in the world the kind of lamebrains and misfits and nit-pickers and odd ducks and stuffed shirts and egomaniacs and milquetoasts and closet sensualists as are vividly represented by us all.
God is foolish to send us out to speak hope to a world that slogs along heart-deep in the conviction that things can only get worse . . . He is foolish to have us speak of loving our enemies when we have a hard enough time loving our friends . . . God is foolish to have us proclaim eternal life to a world that is half in love with death . . . God is foolish to send us out on a journey for which there are no maps, and to aim us in the direction of a goal we can never know until we get there. Such is the foolishness of God. And yet, and yet, Paul says, “the foolishness of God is wiser than men.”
From a book of 'Uncollected Pieces' entitled, A Room Called Remember as quoted by Jan Karon in Patches of Godlight.

[ “lamebrains and misfits and nit-pickers and odd ducks and stuffed shirts and egomaniacs and milquetoasts and closet sensualists” -- I can be all of these.]

I Corinthians 4:9-13
God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. 10 We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! 11 To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. 12 We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; 13 when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment.

II Corinthians 4:5-7
For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.