Nothing Left

The prophet laments that Judah has been carried off into exile, that the great city lies in ruins, that there is nothing lift of its former glory.  He laments that everything they had worked for was gone, reduce to ashes and they themselves we being carried off into captivity.  The book he writes is the Book of Lamentations, in which he laments the absolute loss of Judah.

And yet, in the middle of the lament, he finds reason to rejoice: "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him" (Lam 3:22-24).

They had lost everything except the One Thing that really mattered: God Love."  Max Lucado once mused, "If all God ever did was save my soul, wouldn't that be enough?"  If we did, in fact, lose the whole world that we know, but gained our soul salvation, wouldn't we have gained everything? (the flip side of Matthew 26:16).

I remember when my wife, Gayla, died and I wound up losing my business, my house, my savings and even my pick-up truck.  I thought to myself that I had lost everything except for my faith in God, which was all I really needed from the start.  I had nothing left except the One Thing that really matters in the end: My relationship with the Lord.

I minister to hospice patients daily who have nothing left.  Their jobs are a fading memory, their houses are owned by someone else, they live in a bed in a nursing home, they have nothing to call their own.  And yet, so many of them greet me with a big smile and always have something encouraging to say because they know they have, as "Curly" in the movie "City Slickers" once quipped, "That one thing."  They had their faith and everything was lying before them.

The great mystery of the Christian faith is that when you lose everything in your life except the Lord, you discover that all you ever needed was Him.  In fact, it is not until we give up on everything else that we finally gain what is truly valuable: "Those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples" (Lk 16:33).

Job said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart" (1:21).  We come in with nothing and we leave with nothing.  So why do we wrangle our whole lives for things that we don't need coming or going?  Why not instead work to develop such a deep abiding relationship with the Lord that we have nothing left of remotely comparable value - until we, in truth, have nothing left?  Jus' Say'n.