Friday: I Know Both
WEEK 44
FRIDAY
I KNOW BOTH
Philippians 4:11-13
We saw yesterday Paul had mastered complexity; amid everything he lived contented. The rest of the passage quoted is, “I know the experience of being in need and of having more than enough; I have learned the secret to being content in any and every circumstance, whether full or hungry or whether having plenty or being poor. I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength” (Phil 4:12-13). This is one of the most amazingly masterful passages ever written. It wasn’t literature; it was life, not fancy, but fact. The wonder of it is that he could be contented in both plenty and hunger, abundance and want, abounding and being abased. Some can be content in hunger, want, abasement—the ascetics—world-renounced. Others are content in plenty and abundance—the aesthetics—world-loving. If you can take only one or the other, you are weak and vulnerable. Paul could take both. If prosperity came, he took it; he could stand it. If penury came, he could take that too. If compliment came, he took it; he could stand it. If criticism came, he could stand that too. He was invulnerable from either side.
Why? For a simple reason. His life was centered not in plenty or penury but in a Person. Come plenty or penury, the Person was still there and centrally there. The roots of Paul’s life were in Christ. Plenty and penury were on the margin; Christ was at the center. Therefore Paul was centrally happy in Christ. His happiness was dependent not on happenings but on relationships with an eternal Person.
In these passages he lets us see the center of his rejoicing: “We rejoice in our hope. . . . We rejoice in our sufferings. . . . We also rejoice in God” (Rom 5:2, 3, 11 RSV). The last was important and the secret of the other two; unless you can rejoice in God, and in God alone if necessary, you cannot rejoice in hope, for you’ll be afraid God won’t be sufficient if this or that is taken away. And you cannot rejoice in sufferings, for the God-joy is insufficient. If health and wealth and the world are stripped away, and God alone remains, we must be able to rejoice or we are vulnerable. “All my springs are in you” (Ps 87:7 RSV). When they are, let a drought of anything come, then we are not thirsty for something we do not have.
O Jesus, I thank you for saying, “Whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again” (John 4:14). I thank you for the never-thirsty life. It’s wonderful. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall drink and drink deeply of the Fountain that never runs dry—God.