Everything and nothing

A man sits down across from me, his name might make you laugh and think it’s more of a pet’s name than anything else. Knowing this man and his history however makes me think he could probably harm me in multiple ways that I don’t want to think of.

Our 3 ½ hour trip through the winding Andes Mountains was made even more memorable as this Ex-government intelligence officer told me his story. Stories filled with three-day hikes through mountains, friends and coworkers being assassinated, spending 3 weeks with an opposing military force only to find out they were protecting him from a corrupt portion of his own forces. Hearing of his journeys of passing completely unnoticed through multiple checkpoints and seeing his wife killed as someone made a fourth attempt on his life. I think about my life and how the problems and difficulties I’ve faced have paled in comparison to his.

I look over the table at this man whose integrity has kept him out of work because he takes no part or exposes corruption. He trusts that God will bring him work as he needs it and God will provide for him and his two sons. As I see him sitting across from me his glasses are mere inches off the book he scans and has been reading for the past thirty minutes.

What words of life does he find in his Bible? He studies it so intently. What verses mean so much more to him than they do to me? What phrases and promises bring peace and comfort into a man’s life who’s given everything for his country, only to have just about everything taken away? What would I be willing to give or to die for? Does the man sitting across the table count those things as a loss? Or does he realize that he has nothing, so he can have everything?

Has he realized something that I have not? When he awakes in the morning does he wonder whether he will finish the day? Does he trust that his life is in the hands of a creator who is fashioning and preparing him for even greater days? Do I live that same way?

His fingers lead the way to the passages, and his eyes stay fixed… I realize now he’s rereading the passage the preacher spoke from tonight. He’s looking back at the words that have probably sustained him through weeks and years of desperation. It’s not a fancy Bible, no fancy notes or commentaries, but to this man, it’s everything. It’s the words of truth and life that have and will bring him everything he needs. This is everything to him, without Christ in his life it's nothing. What is it to me?

"Are the things you're living for worth Christ dying for?"
- epitaph of Leonard Ravenhill