“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”
—Galatians 2:20, NIV
I like T-shirts with thoughtful, quirky messages—something short and a little clever that makes you stop and think. I’ve got a few of them, and I’m always on the lookout for another.
Recently, while reading Roy Hession’s The Calvary Road, I came across a little phrase that caught my attention: “A C is a bent I.”
Now there’s a T-shirt!
Hession was writing about the words of Paul in Galatians 2:20, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Not I, but Christ. And there it is. A capital I, standing straight and tall, bent into a C. The C is for Christ. That is clever, but there’s something much deeper here than a catchy slogan on a T-shirt.
In September 1904, a young Welshman named Evan Roberts attended a prayer meeting led by the evangelist Seth Joshua. During Joshua’s prayer, two words caught Roberts’s attention: “Bend us.” Those words gripped him. Roberts began to pray, “O Lord, bend me.” It became a defining moment in his life and in the remarkable Welsh Revival that followed.
Revival historian J. Edwin Orr explained that the Welsh word translated as bend carried a stronger meaning than the English word suggests. It meant to be shaped, like clay in the hands of a potter. Not merely bending or bowing down, but yielding ourselves to the One who would shape us.
We resist that kind of bending. We want Jesus to lead us, but we have our own plans. We want His wisdom, but we trust our own understanding. We pray for His will to be done, but only as long as it doesn’t interfere too much with ours. And there stands that capital I—straight, stiff, and unwilling to bend.
James wrote, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (James 4:10, NIV).
That’s the invitation. To surrender our pride, our self-sufficiency, and our need to be right and in control, and to allow the Lord to work in the places we’ve kept to ourselves—to become more like Jesus. And this isn’t something we accomplish through determination or willpower. It’s the work of Christ in us as we bend ourselves to Him.
Paul understood this. He wasn’t merely trying to be a better version of himself. His old life had been crucified with Christ, and now Christ lived in him. Not I, but Christ.
I’ve been following Jesus for more than forty-five years, and I’m still learning what that means. There are places in my heart and life where I need to yield, attitudes that need changing, desires that need surrendering, and ways of thinking that need to be reshaped by His Word and Spirit. That’s why the simple prayer of Evan Roberts grips me. (And I really like his last name.)
Lord, bend me.
“A C is a bent I” would make a great T-shirt. But more than wearing a clever message, I want to live a life that speaks of Jesus. A life that reflects His character, His love, His grace, and His presence in the world—not just a slogan on my chest, but the posture of my heart.
O Lord, make me an I bent into a C.
Not I, but Christ.
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