By the Way: Strength in life goes well beyond might

By Oz Lorentzen on August 30, 2025.

You may remember the story about the oak tree and the reeds; about how the reeds can weather storms that the big strong oak cannot.

This reminds us that there is more than one way to think about strength. Granted the rock or oak tree is a typical symbol of strength, but this is a strength that has a lot in common with death.

Life requires a strength that is flexible, adaptable, responsive. There is an understanding of strength that is counter productive to growth and change, inimical to flourishing or thriving.

We may be at cross purposes to our own goals and aspirations if we hold to this image of strength – strength as power, as an ability to get one’s own way, an immunity to claim of the other.

The trajectory of this model of strength leads finally to isolation and personal disintegration. No man (or woman) is an island says the poet; and yet we may live as if this is the ideal, or at least the ideal for me and mine.

There is another way, “a more excellent way,” says the ancient sage: Love. Both flexible and resilient, adaptive and creative while fixed on its purpose and self sustaining since it increases as it gives, Love is a strength for those who would choose life.

There is a mystery here, it seems counter intuitive, but when we focus on our selves we become less. When, however, we find ourselves caught up in something bigger or other than our self, we become more.

Mostly we seek the right things, our desire for strength and stability, for security and well-being are healthy and good. It may be, however, that we conceptualize these things in ways that sabotage our efforts.

I can never truly be strong until I discover the capacity to give, to be responsive, to be receptive, to be accessible … that is, until I discover the capacity to act in love. I am encouraged by the same ancient writer: “Love never fails.”

“Never fails,” now that sounds like real strength.

Oz Lorentzen is the pastor at St. Barnabas Anglican Church

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