His divine power has granted to us
all things that pertain to life and godliness...
-- 2
Peter 1:3
We have
everything we need.
That is a
simple statement, but a hard truth to comprehend.
As I
write, I am sitting on the couch in my air-conditioned house, drinking coffee.
I am about to head to an air-conditioned church and sit in a padded chair - and
drink more coffee. Most who read this will be in similar comfort.
My point:
I've never known extreme poverty or the desperation of searching for a meal. I
can only imagine how foreign the statement, we
have everything we need, might sound to a family who is being
evicted, or to one having just buried a child, or to a mother combing scraps in the
Matamoros Mexico dump to feed to her toddler (which I've seen).
Trite
answers don't work. And American Christianity seems to often boil down to
triteness and self-focus. I'll take it a step further (since it's my blog),
trite and self-serving Christianity is not Christianity. And in my Christian
journey, I am often guilty of "unchristianess." (Again, my blog, I
can invent words.)
When we
read Peter's words above, we often miss some important depth.
His divine power - Whose power? God's. (As in,
"God's, period!" Not yours, not mine.)
...has granted - past tense, with continuing and
ongoing results. (It's a Greek grammatical tense thing.)
...to us - This promise
is given to the community of faith. And though it has individual impact, it
is us, not me. (More on this in a
moment.)
...all things - we have everything we need (keep
reading).
...life and godliness -
to live as God intends for us, (for our calling and purpose.)
This
statement may sound trite, but it is true: We
have everything we need in Christ.
I have
often heard it said that God will never allow me to face more than I can bear.
I struggle with the statement, though the fact that I am alive and well (and
writing), sings the melody of its truth. That stated, I'd like to amend the
platitude: God will never allow us to face more than we can
bear... together and
through his strength
and presence.
The
Christian life is a life lived in community with others from whom and with whom
we share strengths, weaknesses, joys and pain. And it is a body (Paul's
analogy) that is completely interconnected drawing its strength and power from
Christ.
So, with
all these concepts in mind I can confidently state: We have everything we need.
I, for one, tend to want more... to look for more. A blog post I wrote
in davidmstanleykineticlife.blogspot.com quotes Bono from U2, whose lyric cries, But I still haven't found what I'm
looking for.
But here
is a truth I've learned and am learning: The real and worthy search in this
life is not about looking for more. The worthwhile search is not the constant
desire for something else,
something other. The better
journey is one that leads us to deeper understanding of WHO IS this one who
provides, and who he has
made us to be for ourselves and others.
That for
which you search is not out there somewhere. It is instead found in a God who
is a whisper away.
Keep
searching... deeper.
God, I have everything I need... in you.
For
now...
D
