My devotions recently have been coming from the Puritan prayer book, The Valley of Vision. This collection of prayers has provided such meaningful language for my own time of prayer each day. The prayer I read today is entitled “Christ is All.” Here is an excerpt from the opening:
O Lover to the Uttermost,
May I read the meltings of thy heart to me
in the manger of thy birth,
in the garden of thy agony,
in the cross of thy suffering,
in the tomb of thy resurrection,
in the heave of thy intercession.
Such a fitting title for this prayer. Christ is indeed ALL — every movement of His life is a melting of the Divine Heart toward me, toward us. Elsewhere in the prayer book, sin is described as “a loose spirit” toward God — making something or someone else the ultimate ALL of my existence. To follow Jesus is to make Him the center of gravity in my universe, the Sun around which all else orbits.
Today I’m asking, “Is Christ my ALL?”
Inevitably, I can only affirm this conditionally, temporally, occasionally. For a few fleeting moments, I can make Him my everything, locking in on Him with sincere fervor. And almost as soon as this happens, I become Simon Peter on that fateful night, aware of something supernatural occurring between us, between Jesus and me. And without a second thought, my flesh overtakes me and I am aware of the wind and the waves and the frailties of my finitude. And I begin to sink. I want to make Jesus my ALL, but I’m severely limited by my own sinfulness and fear. Jesus knows all too well: “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” (Matt. 26:41).
But I also have to think that my desire to make Him my ALL counts for something.
Thomas Merton famously said that the desire to please God pleases God. And I believe this is a Gospel truth.
So today, I will try.
I will give my all to making Christ my ALL.
And no doubt this striving is part of the Spirit’s work of sanctifying my soul.
But I’m even more grateful that even in the moments when this promise is beyond my ability to keep, Jesus sees beyond my fleeting faithfulness and peers into my heart, to see my desire to please Him.
