Paul gets referenced a lot in Adventist circles. His missionary journeys, his theology, his letters that built half the New Testament. We love Paul.
We also love citing his thorn. That mysterious, unresolved suffering he carried — the thing God didn’t take away, the grace that had to be sufficient because nothing else was coming.
What we don’t do is admit we have one.
Adventist culture runs on competence and forward motion. We are a people with a mission, a message, a health plan, and a lot of potlucks to organize. There is not a lot of liturgical space for I am not okay and I haven’t been for a while.
So we perform fine. We show up. We smile through fellowship lunch. We say God is good and mean it mostly — and hope nobody asks follow-up questions.
Meanwhile, the thorn is still there. The marriage that’s held together with silence. The kid you don’t know how to reach anymore. The faith that used to feel like certainty and now feels like a question you’re afraid to finish asking.
Paul didn’t hide his suffering to protect his testimony. His suffering was his testimony. The power showed up in the weakness. That was the whole point.
The church becomes something worth staying in the moment we stop requiring people to pretend. When someone can say I have a thorn and the room doesn’t flinch.
That church exists. We’re building it — one honest conversation at a time.
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