Richness and Poverty Of A Different Kind

[John Becker]

Sitting in my hotel room in the early hours of the morning here in Chiang Mai, I was ministered to the core of my being by these words written by Eberhard Arnold, founder of the  Bruderhof Community, in an article called Das Gluck, published in 1921. With several different emotions and conflicting struggles in my heart and mind, this is exactly what I needed to meditate on today.  I want to share it with SOIL.

"Those who are blessed are characterized by their poverty and neediness, longing, hunger and thirst. At the same time they possess wealth in love, energy for peace, and victory over all resistance. Their nature is purity and single-heartedness, in which they see God. These are people of inner vision, who see the essential. They bear the world's suffering. They know that they are beggars in the face of the Spirit. Knowing they have no righteousness within themselves, they look to righteousness, and they hunger and thirst for the Spirit. Theirs is not the happiness of satiety; it is not the pleasure of gratified desire. A deeper happiness is disclosed here to eyes and hearts that are open. Only where people feel poor, empty, hungry and thirst will there be an openness to God and his riches.

This is the essesnce of true religious experience: richness in God and poverty in oneself. ... So they are both poor and rich at the same time. They are people of faith who have nothing in themselves and yet possess everything in God. In spite of failing again and again, they try to reveal God's invisible nature through their deeds.  Just as they themselves receive mercy, so they pour mercy on all in need. They are on the side of poverty and suffering, on the side of all who suffer injury, and they are ready to be persecuted with them for the sake of justice. They know that they cannot go through life without struggle and that their opponents’ slander will fall on them like a hailstorm; yet they rejoice in this struggle and remain the peacemakers who overcome opposition everywhere and conquer enmity through love. The people of the Beatitudes are the people of love. They live from God’s heart, and there they feel at home. The law of the spirit of life has set them free from the inescapable law of sin and death; no power can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

Thank you Rachel Bee for giving me this book, which God found fit to put in my bag for this trip.

Let us consider these words and live into them as the blessed people we are - poor in an of ourselves, and rich in God!

[Daniel Robinson]

Thank you brother. Well put. You are always in my prayers.

[John Becker]

Hi Daniel. Thanks for your comment and question. This IS the question.  I believe the Psalms of Ascent (Ps 120-134) speak to this. We are people on pilgrimage and not always ascending. The call on our lives is to go "further up and further in" as CS Lewis put it in The Last Battle.  But there are the countless pitfalls and back sliding. One of my mentors told me the secret to his spiritual life was "a lot of practice at starting again".  God wants our heart in the here and now - yesterday is gone - tomorrow has still yet to come, but right now is what matters between me and God. The decisions I make today are based on remembering God's love, faithfulness and forgiveness demonstrated yesterday, and trusting he is the same today and will hold to his promises for tomorrow. When we put action to faith and hope we walk in and work out love.  And when we walk in and work out love with our neighbors, especially the least of these we see the transformation of our lives and the lives of others and it puts wind in our sails.

[Daniel Robinson]

Great post brother. The closest I have ever come to God was in a house church at the city dump in Tijuana Mexico. At this church I saw 100+ homeless men, women and children crying out for God in a way that I had not seen before or since that time. But it makes me wonder. As we (and I mean I) grow in our professions, possessions and our maturity in Christ, how do we grow closer still without letting go of the hunger that we knew as new Christians back when we were on cloud nine just learning of our salvation. I guess it would be by following the example of great men and digging ever deeper into what it means to "know" God. But whats your take?

[Nate Flynn]

John, your post ministered to me today greatly, struggling with shift worker's disease. Thanks for sharing it from your heart, and it's funny I read it after several months of being on here, and it's done great work, God's truth, thank you again. I love you.

[John Becker]

Brother Gary. I wish you were here as well. I so appreciate you praying for me and for the gatherings here. May God be glorified.  Your brother,  John

[John Becker]

Thank you Mary for responding. I have re-read it several times today as well. There are some profound truths.  I hope you are well.

[Mary Elmore]

I think I need to read this again... and again... Thanks for sharing!

[Gary Casady]

Hi John,  Thanks for sharing this.  I have been thinking of you all day...wishing I was there with you.  So, have been praying and in that very real sense I am there.  Blessings my friend, Gary