What do we lack??

The time is fast approaching for many of us to leave, myself included. For me it is a frantic rush to acquire the things that I can just cannot live without while in Macau. You know important things like a digital camera, and now I want an iPod, (things I can obviously not live without) and often I have found myself thinking, what do I still lack?

Skip back to a conversation I recently had with a friend. She was retelling a story she had seen on the world news of a man from Niger. He and his family were nomads and without food. In order to survive they were forced to eat their camel. Instead of questioning the Lord about why he and his family did not have enough food to eat, he was asking the Lord to forgive him. This story shamed me.

That man possessed the thing that I lack, a brokeness before our all powerful Lord. In my pride, I operate in this life with a sense of entitlement, as though I have done something to deserve all of the wonderful blessings that overflow in my life. My skewed vision of the world cannot be farther from the truth. What do I have to offer a God who bought my life with the life of his son? What do I have to give back to a Lord that gives me everything I have? Nothing. Now back to the question of what do I lack... nothing. The two do not seem to go together do they? Such is the grace of our Lord, that in our nothingness, we have everything. We lack not one single thing that we need in this life if we have our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In I Corinthians, chapter 13, the famous verses about "love" are found. When I read thes passages, I sometimes put "God" in the place of "love". It makes sense because "God is love". " If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." (c13,v2). When I read the scripture in this manner, the nothingness of a life without God is illuminated. However, as I go about my life, I know that I lack nothing, because the greatest love of all has found me in Jesus Christ. "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship" (Romans 12:1). What response can I give to this love, but to offer all that I have, and this is not even of my own power but through my Savior.

So in response to the question of "What do I lack?". Everything and Nothing. Praise be to God for my nothingness.