Thursday: From the Pit of Nothingness
WEEK 23
THURSDAY
FROM THE PIT OF NOTHINGNESS
Luke 10:21-22
We saw yesterday that there was nothing in this original group that would make us pick them as the potential saviors of humanity. They were nobodies, but they became somebodies. They could sing in the words of Isaiah, “You yourself have spared my whole being from the pit of destruction” (38:17; NASB has “pit of nothingness”).
Nothingness had become “somethingness-plus”! These people who had nothing had everything—enough and to spare for the rest of the world. They lived and preached with an overflow. How did it all happen?
I said they had nothing. That must be modified. They had nothing except receptivity. And having receptivity, they had everything—everything that God had. That was the secret of their adequacy. They knew how to take. And they took all they needed for themselves and all they needed for others.
It is all so simple it is breathtaking. Jesus trained his followers for three years in one thing and only one thing: receptivity. He trained them in how to let go in order to take. The key sentences are these: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Luke 18:17 RSV), and, “I thank thee, Father, LORD of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes” (Matt 11:25 RSV). The central characteristic of a child is receptivity. When my grandson, at two-and-a-half years of age, said to his mother, “Electricity is in the telephone wire,” he was repeating what I had said to him. He was receptive and hence had something to impart. That spirit—and that spirit alone—is the secret of the passing from a condition of inadequacy to adequacy.
A derelict vessel resisted all efforts to raise it from the mud until someone suggested that it be surrounded by scows with chains attached to them and to the bottom of the vessel, which was done when the tide was out. When the tide came in, it lifted the derelict effortlessly. These people were stranded in moral inadequacy; Jesus taught them to receive the incoming life of God, the Holy Spirit; they did, and life arose effortlessly on this Tide.
O Holy Spirit, I thank you that I do not have to struggle and pull by self-effort. I have only to let go and let you lift me to new heights of power and adequacy. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Anybody can receive who wants to receive. I want to receive.