Gaining It All Having Lost ‘It All’

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.