Jesus is Everything

Have you ever thought that you had nothing left?  Like really nothing left at all.  What does that feel like? I know it’s a mild way of saying this, but that’s a difficult place to be in.  I’ve had that experience and I know what that "difficult" place is like.


Back in the Spring of 2000, about 19 years and a month ago, I was diagnosed with cancer.  It was skin cancer, and the tumor was about stage 3, I think.  If you’ve noticed, I have a scar and some discoloration on the left side of my face that comes first from the surgery and then radiation.

At the time I was 19 and wouldn’t be 20 until that Summer.  It wasn’t just the diagnosis that hit either. The past December, my three remaining grandparents had all passed away within weeks of each other.  And just before that, earlier in the fall, I had started the process to go into ministry. I’d been struggling with what to do with my life, and was changing my major for the third time when I started the process.

It was in the middle of all of this, the surgery, the chemo and radiation, before we left for Houston for five weeks to get a second opinion that also turned into the radiation treatments, and before I left school for the semester that everything all came together in that difficult place.

That day when it hit, I was walking across campus at Truman State.  Everything was hitting home for me.  

It was all coming apart.  

All of these things were coming together and I felt that nothingness.  And I shouldn’t say that it feels like nothing, but it’s the kind of nothing where you don’t know what your options are, or what you’re going to do next, or how things are going to go, or if you’re going to be okay, and what happens if they aren’t okay, and it all comes together in one big thing that is hard to describe, and you wonder if there is anything left.

The nothing comes because it feels like there is nothing you can do, and you're paralyzed with indecision.

In that moment, and I could probably walk back to the place on campus where I was, I did what I thought I was supposed to do in that situation.  I’d tried everything else, other ways of coping with it all and I knew I was going into ministry, so I knew what I was “supposed” to do, so I did it.

I gave the Sunday School answer.

In my last post, I said that those Sunday School answers aren’t always bad.  I think a lot of times they are if we never get beyond them. Sometimes they are just what we need, when we don’t know anything else.

Sometimes they are just the answer we need to know, before we need to use it.  So I gave that Sunday School answer, standing there on the red brick walkway.

I said God, it’s yours.  I can’t handle this anymore.  It’s been to much, to fast, and I can’t deal with it.  I’d tried everything else, so there I was, hoping that this would be the answer.

I wasn’t miraculously cured there on the spot.  

I didn’t suddenly find a clear path forward, and I certainly wasn’t going to be bright eyed and bushy tailed about everything all of a sudden.

But, I did feel relief.  I did feel like I could let go of most of the anxiety and tension I’d been feeling and holding on to. I did feel lighter.  In that moment, I knew that I could handle whatever it was that was going to come my direction.  

Jesus is moments like this.  

The words that we put in to fill in the blank when we say Jesus is, change for each moment that we face.  We’ve been talking about them since Ash Wednesday.

For me, though, this is one of the most important ways that we can fill in the blank.  Because, when we can say that Jesus is Everything, even if we aren’t really sure what it means, then we can also say that we don’t have to be anything and that’s okay.

Because there are, and there will be times when we can’t be anything, when we’re just barely hanging on, and what we need is a God who is out there that is everything so we don’t have to.

Take a look at a couple of verses from a reading out of Colossians 1:9-14.  Specifically, take a look at the last two verses in that passage.

At the start of the passage, Paul is telling us that we can do great things, but these two verses remind us of how we get there.  It doesn’t come through our own power. When we rely on that, then we’re going to find ourselves in a time when we can’t do anything, when all we’re feeling is that big, hard to describe nothing, and we don’t have any answer for what to do next. 

Because we’ve tried it all.

Sometimes, the situation that we’re facing is sin, sins that we’ve committed, or that others have committed against us, and no matter how long ago it happened, it sticks with us, because we’re really bad at forgetting those kinds of things.

Whatever it is, we can recognize it because it is trying to take our life away, through disease, job loss, family changes, divorce, moving, uncertainty in the world around us, natural disasters, and even sometimes joys and celebrations that create new strain on our lives.

It’s really hard to “fix” our way out of those things.  

Sometimes, admittedly, we can, but there are a lot of times that we can’t.  Sometimes when we can, we don’t do it very well.

This is Paul’s reminder to us that there are times when we don’t have to be everything, when we don’t have to have anything, when we can be nothing.  Not strong, not patient, not hard working enough, not _______ and that’s okay.

Why?

He rescued us from the control of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. He set us free through the Son and forgave our sins.
--Colossians 1:13-14

We have everything, because Jesus is Everything.  That means that it’s okay to not be anything sometimes.  In fact, that’s important.  It’s in those moments when we aren’t anything that we’re looking in the right place, looking for Jesus.

It’s in those moments that even if we don’t know what they mean that the Sunday School answers are important.  It’s important that in those moments we can say, Lord, I can’t handle this anymore, I have to give it to you.

We’ve been in times and situation where we know we couldn’t handle it anymore, where we didn’t know what to do, or had lost hope for the future.  This is why we have Jesus.

He is our Everything.

This is a message we can give to others.  This is a message we can remind ourselves of. This is a message that is fundamental to not just us as a people of faith, but to all people everywhere.  Go share this message, and do it in Jesus name.