“All This & Christ Too” – There is an old story about a Scottish girl who was said to be down to her last piece of bread. Looking at it, she reportedly smiled and said, “all this, and Christ too.” In other words, she wasn’t merely thankful for the bread. She was expressing the conviction that even if all she possessed was that small piece of bread, she still had Christ and therefore had more than she deserved. (The spirit of Habakkuk 3:17-18 comes to mind.) I sometimes wonder if that story has been polished a bit over the years, or perhaps it’s just one of those stories that gets passed along because it captures an important truth.
As a side note, I just discovered this week that the famous story about the high priest entering the Most Holy Place with a rope tied around his waist is apparently completely fabricated. I was surprised. I had heard it so many times that I simply assumed it was true. The story goes that a rope was tied around the high priest so that if God struck him dead while he was inside the Most Holy Place, the other priests could pull his body out without entering themselves. It certainly makes for a dramatic sermon illustration. The problem is that there appears to be no scriptural reference for it and no reliable historical evidence that it ever happened.
Whatever the origin of the Scottish girl’s story, I’ve always loved it. It captures something beautiful about faith. There are moments when believers are granted that kind of clarity. In those seasons, Christ seems precious beyond words, and the things of this world appear small by comparison. Such moments are gifts from God and should never be despised. At the same time, not everyone is standing in that moment of triumph. Some people are simply tired. Some are lonely. Some are frightened. Some are carrying burdens that never seem to leave.
Some people have been fighting the same battle for so long that they can hardly remember when it started. For them, the burden is not merely the struggle itself, but the exhaustion that comes from knowing themselves too well. They know the thoughts they wish they did not think, the reactions they wish they did not have, and the sins that seem determined to follow them wherever they go. They have prayed about these things more times than they can count. They have grieved over them, confessed them, struggled against them, and resolved countless times that things would be different. Yet somehow they find themselves facing the same battles again.
After enough years, discouragement begins to settle in. Each failure seems to confirm the worst suspicions they have about themselves, and little by little their attention shifts from who Christ is to what they are not. Eventually they begin measuring God’s disposition toward them by their own disposition toward themselves. Because they are disappointed in themselves, they assume He must be disappointed as well. In the process, they construct an entire system of acceptance and rejection in their minds, deciding when they may draw near, when they should keep their distance, when they have done enough, and when they have fallen too far short. Yet Christ has always been a better Savior than we are willing to believe.
It may also be worth remembering that when we read the Scriptures, we are looking at a collection of spiritual highlight reels, even as we tend to forget that these were real men and women living through real fears, uncertainties, and hardships. We see David facing Goliath, but we don’t live through all the nights he spent hiding in caves. Elijah fled in fear. Jeremiah wept. Peter sank. Thomas doubted. Again and again, Scripture reminds us that these men and women were not examples of human strength so much as examples of divine mercy.
We often read their lives from the safety of the last chapter, while they had to live them one uncertain day at a time. We know David survives the cave, Daniel survives the lions, and Peter is restored after his failure. They knew none of those things while they were living through them.
These men and women were not superheroes. They too had fears. They too had questions. They had sleepless nights. They also wondered what God was doing. They were flesh and blood people who faced situations far more frightening than anything most of us will ever encounter. When we read their stories from the comfort of our homes, it is easy to imagine we would have responded with the same confidence. I’m not so sure.
John the Baptist certainly wasn’t feeling triumphant when he sat in prison awaiting execution. He sent word to Christ asking, “art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” I have a hard time believing there wasn’t real pain behind that question. Here was a man who had seen the Spirit descend upon Christ and heard the voice from heaven. (Perhaps one of the lessons here is that no amount of previous light completely shields us from future seasons of darkness, confusion and discouragement.) Now he found himself confined, forgotten, and facing death. Things had certainly not unfolded as he may have expected. I seriously doubt that prison and execution were what he had envisioned when he began proclaiming the coming kingdom of God. Now life had unfolded very differently than he expected, and questions that once seemed unthinkable now pressed upon him from every side. From his prison cell, the promises must have looked very different than they did from the banks of the Jordan. If a prophet of that stature could find himself wrestling with questions in the darkness, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when ordinary believers do as well.
And perhaps that is precisely why these accounts were preserved for us. The story of God’s people has never been one of uninterrupted strength, unwavering courage, or perfect faith. Rather, it is the story of a faithful God sustaining weak and needy people. The good news is not that God’s people never waver. The good news is that Christ remains faithful when they do. II Timothy 2:13. MPJ