Day Twelve
”LET ME HAVE ALL THINGS,”
Today’s Scripture Reading
Now if you really obey the LORD your God’s voice, by carefully keeping all his commandments that I am giving you right now, then the LORD your God will set you high above all nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and find you if you obey the LORD your God’s voice: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the field. Your own fertility, your soil’s produce, and your livestock’s offspring—the young of both cattle and flocks—will be blessed. Your basket and your kneading bowl will be blessed. You will be blessed when you are out and about and blessed when you come back. The LORD will defeat any enemies who attack you. They will come against you from one direction but will run for their lives away from you in seven different directions. The LORD will command the blessing to be with you—in your barns and on all the work you do—and he will bless you on the land the LORD your God is giving you. The LORD will establish you as his own, a holy nation, just as he swore to you, if you keep the LORD your God’s commandments and walk in his ways. All the earth’s peoples will see that you are called by the LORD’s name, and they will be in awe of you. The LORD will make good things abound for you—whether the fertility of your womb, your livestock’s offspring, or your fertile soil’s produce—on the very land that the LORD swore to your ancestors to give to you. The LORD will open up for you his own well-stocked storehouse, the heavens, providing your land with rain at just the right time and blessing all your work. You will lend to many nations, but you won’t have any need to borrow. The LORD will make you the head of things, not the tail; you will be at the top of things, not the bottom, as long as you obey the LORD your God’s commandments that I’m commanding you right now, by carefully doing them. Don’t deviate even a bit from any of these words that I’m commanding you right now by following other gods and serving them.
Deuteronomy 28:1-14
Reflection
Here, it appears that the prayer shifts from an internal focus (being “full” or “empty”) toward an external focus (“all things” or “nothing”). There are at least two ways to interpret the phrase, “Let me have all things.” First, it could mean wants and wishes. Wants and wishes are the unnecessary but far too often welcomed “things” that give the craving person the luxuries and conveniences of life, the “extras,” so to speak.
Extras are what many people associate with happiness and pleasure, only to find out that once the extras are attained, they don’t fill that God-shaped void in our souls. This first interpretation, however, doesn’t seem to fit Wesley’s theology and perspective on the Christian life. I can’t imagine that when Wesley prayed this prayer and led covenant prayer services he would have had in mind the idea that somehow God cared about his fortunes—well-being, perhaps, but not any possessions.
I have a very wealthy friend. When I say, “very wealthy,” I mean crazy rich. Not quite Gates, Musk, or Bezos money, but more money than I can ever imagine what to do with. About ten years or so ago, this friend of mine engineered a piece of software that changed the landscape of how computer programmers and video game designers code or write software. A very large technology company purchased this for hundreds of millions of dollars. After many large purchases of glamourous homes, exotic cars and boats, and jewelry over the last ten years, he recently told me, “I thought I would be fulfilled by all these things I have bought. But, honestly, Chris, possessing all this stuff doesn’t mean a thing to me anymore.”
I specifically remember one day in which my friend drove his latest purchase, a very rare car that I think he has driven less than a dozen times, to my house to show it to me. As we stared at it, he said, “Yeah, I am blessed.” I said, “You think God cares about this car? You aren’t blessed because you own a car that less than one hundred people in the world have. You are blessed because you’ve been given life.” The point is simply this: “All things” mean nothing if they aren’t kept in proper perspective.
The truth is, some people are afforded the extras. Our human condition leads us to compare at times. We look around and ask questions like, “Why is it that so-and-so gets this, that, or the other, and we are left without?” Extras are just that—the unnecessary bonuses in life that might be fun to have and might bring moments of pleasure. In the end, however, the extras tend to disappoint us as they eventually become faded, dull, and monotonous.
Second, one could interpret the phrase, “Let me have all things,” to mean something akin to “Let me have enough.” I would contend that this is more of what Wesley had in mind. Enough is essentially abundance reframed and held in proper perspective. For many, enough is all they need. Then, what really matters comes into focus and we begin to see more clearly that “stuff” doesn’t matter. What matters is our faithful commitment to seek God’s idea of the good life, which is a life patterned after the mission, ministry, and message of Jesus.
What matters is our faithful commitment to seek God’s idea of the good life, which is a life patterned after the mission, ministry, and message of Jesus.
I realize that “all things” is the complement to “nothing,” which we will explore in tomorrow’s reading. I also realize that “all things” is one extreme end of the spectrum. Today, I want to suggest that one way to pray this prayer and find the middle of the spectrum is to pray that we might learn to live with enough. People who can learn to live with enough can learn to live honestly in the intent of the Wesley Covenant Prayer by choosing to live with a reframed perspective of “all things.”
I have struggled to learn to live with an “enough” mentality. Often, if I am honest, I work in a sliding scale of what is “enough” to my struggles. The scale typically slides to accommodate my human instincts to collect and to own, mainly for feelings of control and security. I have learned a few tips to help me practice Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 6:25-34. Before I share my tips, let’s look at the Scripture passage first:
“Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith? Therefore, don’t worry and say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ Gentiles long for all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
The simple conclusion is that each day has plenty of trouble on its own. Stop living with a scarcity mentality and trust God that you will have what you need. Here are three tips I have learned that have helped me to trust God more deeply every day to provide for me and my family:
1.Learn to say no to items I don’t truly need. Since I turned eighteen, I have worked full time. Most of the years that have gone by since turning eighteen I have worked a full-time job and held a second part-time job too. I can’t remember when I haven’t had a full-time job and what I call a second street. My main street is my job at Church of the Resurrection; my second street is writing this book. Because of my second streets over the years, I have never really had to say no. If I have wanted it, and I thought I would use it, I’d buy it. Over the last few years, however, in order to give more, I have decided I would say no to the items that I (or my family) don’t really need. This has allowed me to give more money away and to learn what enough really means.
2.Make people the priority, not pleasures or possessions. When the people around you—family, strangers, coworkers, neighbors, friends, clients—become the priority and serving their needs becomes a consistent discipline in our lives, pleasures and possessions seem almost immediately inconsequential. Taking action on others’ urgent or even semi-urgent needs begets a spirit of generosity. A spirit of generosity begets hope, and hope, of course, is the prevailing confident expectation that in God’s economy, there is enough for everyone.
3.Save to give over save to live. As I have learned how to say no and worked, with failure and flaws, of course, to make people the priority, I have seen that saving money for the purpose of giving to those individuals and organizations in need is fun. My family and I have a blast deciding who we can help and then helping them. Our commitment to simply living with enough gives my wife and three kids a way to rally and work on a project together. Last month, at the suggestion of my youngest son, who is fifteen, we fed fifteen individual families for five days each. Instead of saving to live with more, we’ve been saving to give more, and honestly, it is so much fun!
Deeply committed disciples discipline themselves to avoid falling into the trap of chasing “stuff” and by being consumed by the wants and wishes of life. Instead, deeply committed disciples choose simplicity—they choose to be content with enough. “Let me have all things” is not a prayer for resources and reserves. Within the context of the whole prayer, these short words guide deeply committed disciples toward surrender and humility, especially when the “all things” counterpart of “nothing” is a very real possibility.
Today’s Challenge:
THE GIVEAWAY
Pick an item of yours that has value or that you associate value to. Select a person to give it to, and then give it to them.
Personal Reflection
•Do I struggle with “things”?
•With what do I associate happiness?
Group Discussion
•Do you ever find yourself comparing your “stuff” with that of others? In what ways?
•Do you ever find yourself comparing your happiness to others? In what ways?
•What do you think it means to have enough?
•How do you avoid falling into the trap of chasing stuff?
•What would you say is the main idea of this part of the prayer?
Departing Prayer
Help us to see with eyes of compassion and not eyes of comparison. Teach us, God, to learn to be content with enough and avoid the chasing of material possessions. Also, where we see those without enough, grant us the ability to help. Amen.