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. Most of us have used that at the end of a prayer about an outcome: the job, the scan, the person who has stopped speaking to us. Then the door stayed shut, and we went quiet for a while, and the conclusion we drew has never been said in a room with other people in it. Put into words it would run: he could have, and he did not, and we have stopped asking after the reason. We filed him under unreliable and kept attending. We went on quoting the sentence in public at the same volume, because the alternative was a conversation with him about it.
Look at what the this is. A young man with money has just walked away sorrowful, told to go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor. Jesus turns to the twelve, says a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven, and follows it with the camel and the needle's eye. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? Their amazement is the part we skip over. In their world money read as evidence of God's approval, so if the approved cannot get in, nobody can. The famous sentence answers that question and no other.
Somebody will tell you the needle's eye was a low gate in Jerusalem that a camel could get through on its knees. No ancient source for such a gate has ever been produced, and the disciples settle it anyway: what they heard was an impossibility, and he did not correct them.
Then Peter, who has watched all this, asks what the twelve are getting for having left everything. Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? Even in the room where the impossibility was announced, the arithmetic starts up again within a minute, and we have run that arithmetic this year.
Lord, we have used your promise as leverage on Thursday and read your silence as evidence. The all things in it are fastened to one thing: a man with his hands full coming into the kingdom of God. About that you say impossible first, in front of us, and keep going.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 297 is Fervent Love Covers Sin (1 Peter 4:8).