Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, ‘You are lacking one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’
The rich man in today’s Gospel received a beautiful, difficult blessing. He was able to ask Jesus how he could inherit eternal life and then he was told the answer.
It seems, however, that the rich man was hoping for a different response. Perhaps he wanted Jesus to say, “You don’t need to do anything else–you will inherit eternal life.” Or maybe he wanted Jesus to have some small request or some additional rule to follow. Instead, he is invited to follow Jesus after selling his possessions. This does not seem to be what the man had anticipated or he might not have asked Jesus the question. This good news, this call to discipleship which others received with wild abandon, is met with sadness and a disheartened turning away. The rich man asks a question, receives an answer, and then sulks away. How difficult it is to seek and then find that the cost is higher than you are willing to pay!
This is often true for us, too. We want the Lord to provide an answer to a present difficulty. Hoping for guidance and direction, we implore Jesus to show us the way. Yet when an answer, a path, or a gift is offered, we quickly realize it isn’t what we hoped we would receive. His ways and thoughts are far above our ways, yes, but we keep hoping, over and over again, that they will match up. We find ourselves desiring that just once our meticulously crafted and very comfortable plan will be the one the Lord has also been preparing for us. Many times we, like the rich man, ask questions with specific answers in mind or ask for grace but are focused on very particular graces.
Jesus sees this man wholly. He knows him through and through. The deep desires of his heart and the secret dreams and imaginings are known perfectly to the Lord. It is in light of this knowledge that Jesus offers the answer of sell what you have, give to the poor, and follow Me. Jesus doesn’t need more information to offer a better response. He offers the answer which is perfectly crafted for this man’s heart. Jesus looked at him, loved him, and then placed His finger on the very point which needed His attention right then. The Lord invites him to eliminate what separates them and to become His disciple.
Perhaps before every hard thing that enters our life, the same situation unfolds. Jesus looks at us, loves us, and then points to a lack in our hearts. He does this not to hurt us or to unnecessarily grieve us or to cause us to turn away from Him. Instead, it is this abundant love and great knowledge of our innermost being which causes Him to offer us a grace we didn’t ask for and mercies we didn’t expect. They often come wrapped in problems, accompanied by heartache, and bathed in tears. We don’t want them. We generally desire to resist them. And yet they come, through various means and different channels, from the hand of the Lord.
Weeks ago, I was wandering through Facebook and found a reshared post which made me ache. It isn’t that I can say I have experienced the same sorrows, but I read the beautiful writing of a woman who has since died and I saw the common human experience. She was known as Nightbirde and in a post of hers she wrote intimately about her relationship with the Lord.
I am God’s downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at His door every day. Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses. Sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands. Sometimes I use my key under the mat to let myself in. Other times, I sulk outside until He opens the door to me Himself….
I remind myself that I’m praying to the God who let the Israelites stay lost for decades. They begged to arrive in the Promised Land, but instead He let them wander, answering prayers they didn’t pray. For forty years, their shoes didn’t wear out. Fire lit their path each night. Every morning, He sent them mercy-bread from heaven.
I look hard for the answers to the prayers that I didn’t pray. I look for the mercy-bread that He promised to bake fresh for me each morning. The Israelites called it manna, which means “what is it?”That’s the same question I’m asking—again, and again. There’s mercy here somewhere—but what is it? What is it? What is it?
Among many things, her line of “answering prayers they didn’t pray” struck me. She goes on to say, “It’s not the mercy that I asked for, but it is mercy nonetheless.” And it makes me think of the various sorrows or difficulties in my life past or present as well as those in the lives of people I know and love. The gifts of life don’t come as beautifully and neatly wrapped as we desire. While praying to the Lord, we often receive what we aren’t praying for and yet what we actually need. His mercies are new every morning, but sometimes the mercy is gentle and other times it is severe. The Lord always provides, but it isn’t always what we thought we wanted.
I don’t want to be the rich young man who asks Jesus a question and walks away when he receives an answer he didn’t like, didn’t anticipate, or didn’t think he could handle. Instead, I want to keep showing up at God’s door and keep seeking to understand the gifts He pours abundantly into my lap, gifts I don’t want and yet He keeps giving as well as gifts I long for and receive with a grateful heart. In each moment, I want to discover the mercies God offers and open my heart to welcome them, regardless of how they feel as they crash in my heart.
Like with the rich man, the Lord keeps looking at me and loving me.
He continues to point out the areas of lack, the areas where I embrace something apart from Him, the places where I am stubbornly adhering to my own will and not His. Rather than dejectedly walking away, I want to joyfully run forward into whatever God offers, with a heart ready to receive the antidote to my illness and the abundance to my lack.
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Photo by Giorgio Parravicini on Unsplash
Seeking After His Heart 