There is a beautiful thread woven throughout the Bible related to God as our One Thing. One of the first places we see that thread is in the life of Enoch, who so made God his "one thing" that one day God just invited him directly into His eternal presence (Genesis 5:24). Then in Deuteronomy we hear God's invitation to make living in His love the One Thing, "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:5) and "man does not live by bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD." (Deuteronomy 8:3b). Then it swells to a powerful high point in David's declaration in Psalm 27:4 "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple."
In the New Testament, Jesus, of course, lived the perfect "One Thing" life, His life completely consumed with love for and dependence upon His Abba. "“I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing." (John 5:19). His life was completely focused on His Father's face, so that He never missed a single glance of His Father's gaze nor a single moment of His Father's purposes. Jesus also invited others to live the One Thing life, most notably in His words to Martha and Mary in John 10:42 "Only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
The Apostle Paul lived the One Thing life and invited others to imitate him in it. "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13-14). But is Paul's "one thing" the same as the others? Yes. He defines His "one thing" a few verses earlier as "I want to know Christ..." (Philippians 3:10)
It was all of this that I was pondering this morning, with a sense of wonder at the incredible life that God has invited all of us to live in, a life blinded to anything else, anyone else except Him. A life so consumed with God and His goodness that He cannot be other than our One Thing, capturing us not by our will power but by His sheer, overpowering, persistent goodness!
And then He breaks into my reverie..."Am I your one thing, little one?"
I am so undone...
Tom, one of Abba's children
1 comment:
Tom - I always have to chock these things up to the Spirit of God, but this is exactly what the Lord has been speaking to me about .. the "one thing" ... specifically from Psalm 16:2 - "I said to the Lord, 'You alone are my Lord, I have no good thing outside of You ..." I translate that as "You alone are my Master - You are my one good thing ..."
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