Throughout most of my life, a spare tire was the difference between a flat ending a road trip and only delaying it—a fact affirmed by the axiomatic idiom about rubber meeting road. My teenaged kids all learned to change tires because their treads (and ours) were as thin as the financial skill and resources of their minister-dad. So when I finally bought a vehicle, I was as proud of its deep treads as I was dismayed that its small trunk afforded space only for a donut, not a full spare. Donuts do more than save space in the trunk. They also enforce strict social codes in the driving community. Hobbling around in a car with a donut is like being branded with a scarlet “F.” “This man doesn’t take care of his vehicles; condemn him to the far-right lane, or let him choose the side-streets if he wants to avoid shame!”

Limitations may be physical or psychological; failures may be personal or social, spiritual or circumstantial. Critics assess Paul’s appearance as weak, his speech as unimpressive (2 Corinthians 10:10); and whatever his thorn in the flesh, God assures him he will never be without it (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

A donut-spare may have made me feel like I was riding a three-legged pony in a thoroughbred race; but on the other hand, I made it to my destination, and I ended up with four full-sized tires.

“For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

If three of our tires are faith, the fourth is humility. Pride won’t even fit in the trunk.

To a week knowing in our weakness that God has given us the means for arriving where he has sent us.