CALAMITOUS endings can have the most
salubrious of beginnings. We have to lose it all, materially, before we can
truly grasp the fullness of life spiritually. Don’t worry if you haven’t lost
everything yet – you probably never will. But if you do, and still many
experience grave losses, there is a paradoxical hope that stands to reverse the
order of things, to catapult you into great advantage for the very things
suffered.
We can see, here, that there is a
compensation that God gives to those who have lost – and the more that is lost,
the more that God will compensate. But, it has to be understood, this
compensation is entirely a spiritual thing; it can only be felt and experienced,
never touched or tangible.
***
Thrilled to be alive,
Having survived various
scrapes,
Not the least of which of
these,
Was the experience of sour
grapes.
It’s amazing how regularly,
I’ve been beset by jealous
strife,
But now it’s easier to
trust God,
And to enter into His life!
Is there any point to the covetousness of
envying another for what we don’t have? Yes, the point sends us to God. That’s
the point. Our rancorous dissatisfaction is the hint. There is always something
better than craving something which will probably never be ours. Why would we
torture ourselves? It is world’s better to accept everything that God has given
into our hands alone.
***
It’s amazing what is
gained,
When we are open enough to
lose,
That which we cannot keep,
No matter the payment of
dues.
When we give it all up before
God,
And therefore seek Him
above alone,
We stand and are
astonished,
At just what it is we are shown!
Life can only begin when all the things of
death (those items of materiality we put above God) are stripped away.
The worst circumstance can be the best
thing that ever happened because the gospel is known, and the things of God are
shown, and his love is sown, in loss. Biblical things are often paradoxical, so
no person can boast in and of themselves.
Above every sense of want for something
else is the spiritual blessing of having the material things stripped from us
and swept away.
***
How wonderful it is, that in loss we can
gain everything we never thought possible; that which we never conceived, which
is the spiritual compensation of God. Truly, we gain spiritually when we lose
materially.
© 2014 S. J. Wickham.
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