Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 297 · October 24
The Impossible Thing
“But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
"With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible." Many of us have used that sentence at the end of a prayer for something we wanted badly: the job, the test result, the person who has stopped speaking to us. Then the door stayed shut, and we went quiet for a while. The conclusion we drew has never been said out loud with other people in the room. Put into words, it would sound like this: He could have done it, He did not, and we have stopped asking why. We quietly decided God was unreliable, and we kept going to church. We even went on quoting the verse in public, because the only other choice was an honest talk with Him about it.
Look at what "this" refers to. A rich young man has just walked away sad. Jesus had told him to "go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." Then Jesus turns to His disciples and says that "a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven." He adds the picture of a camel going through the eye of a needle. "When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?" Their amazement is the part we skip. In their day many people took wealth as a sign of God's favour, so if even the rich could not get in, it seemed that nobody could. The famous sentence answers that question, about who can be saved.
Somebody may tell you the needle's eye was a low gate in Jerusalem that a camel could squeeze through on its knees. No ancient source for such a gate has ever been found, and the disciples settle the matter anyway. What they heard was an impossibility, and Jesus did not correct them.
Then Peter asks what they will get for leaving everything: "Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?" In the same conversation where the impossible had just been announced, the counting started again. We have done the same counting ourselves.
Lord, we have used Your promise to push You for what we wanted, and we have read Your silence as proof against You. Forgive us. The "all things" in Your promise are tied first of all to one thing: a person with full hands being brought into the kingdom of God. You said that was impossible with men and possible with God, and You do it. You answered Peter's counting with more than he asked: everyone who leaves anything for Your name's sake "shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." That is the impossible thing You have promised to do for us. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 297 is Fervent Love Covers Sin (1 Peter 4:8).