05 May Devotional Thought – When Christ Is In All
“He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more…” Revelation 3:12
That seems like a rather odd reward for overcoming – captivity? Is there no longer any liberty for those who overcome? Is that to be the penalty for my victory? Imprisonment within the very gate that my conquest has opened? Absolutely not. In that day I will be able to go wherever I wish, for the entire world will be mine. “So why,” you ask “does Jesus say that the one who overcomes will go out no more?” The answer is simply this – there won’t be anything that is “outside.” The entire universe will be enclosed in Jesus. You will never get beyond His walls, because His walls will enclose all creation. You will never be able to go somewhere that His presence is not, for you will find that His presence is everywhere. No longer will the Tree of Knowledge be forbidden or the Tree of Life barred. You will walk to the very ends of the Earth and discover that it is still Eden. Christ’s cross will be found in every street. Pleasure will be found in every sacrifice. There will no longer be the separation of the secular, the worldly, or the frivolous. You won’t have to shut yourself in from the world when you go to pray for the world itself will be your prayer closet. Your work will be worship. Your practice will be prayer. Your labor, love. In that day your datebook will be your devotional journal. The songs that you sing will all be spiritual songs – not so much in their subject, but rather in their intent. Every day will be a Sabbath. Not that you will cease your work, but your worry. The pastime that you enjoy will be a sacrificial one – the consideration of your brother’s joy. You will understand that both joy and sadness were made for, and found in, Christ’s cross. You will find great benefit and interest in others, maybe an interest that had long since dulled in your day. You will bring the trivial things within the great gates by simply bending to them. Surely Cana’s feast is such a trivial, even a trifling thing, to you – but to somebody else it is indeed something. If you can put yourself into that simple experience, then you will have put Christ in Cana. If you can remember that that which is trivial today was a great treasure just yesterday and see your neighbor’s world in the the light of long ago, then you may live in the things of time and go out from Jesus no more.
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