portion

"The Lord is my portion..."

What one thing identifies a true and full faith?

Job answered the question through trial, so did Jeremiah who uttered the line above after Jerusalem fell and he was dragged to Egypt. Peter experienced this truth with his remaining apostles after Pentecost. Foxe's Book of Martyrs tells the stories of the many who found the power of a true and full faith. 

What one thing identifies a true and full faith?

What one thing remains when all else is peeled away from your life?

Jeremiah's life was characterized by an unwavering presentation of bad news. Jerusalem was going down, the Temple was doomed, the people were to be enslaved, the land laid to waste. He prophesied that the few remaining people would live just above a subsistence level. There was no hope in Judah or Jerusalem, except in the Lord their God. 

After the Babylonian devastation of Jerusalem the poorest of the poor and Jeremiah were left to survey the damage. There were no stones still in place, except under mounds of rubble. Acrid tendrils of smoke remained of the Temple and great Palace. The wall was torn down and cast down the slopes. The emaciated bodies left were tossed into the pit known as Gehenna, The waste pit that never stopped burning. 

Jeremiah saw deeper than the devastation, however. He saw that the high places and Asherah poles were gone too. All the false gods of the land were scrubbed away by the Babylonian flood. Finally there was a vacuum where the people who were left could begin to live according to the Law and faith without major influence from foreign people, their gods, their money or their ideas. The first step for rebuilding the people of Judah was to recognize forever "The Lord is my portion..." no matter what happens in this life that comes against me. 

Christians in the USA have enjoyed wealth, favor, high places of power, influence and shown that with erecting great houses of worship and organizations that claim the favor of the god. But the public presentation of faith has been bastardized beyond recognition into commercial displays that are repugnant to the average unbeliever. 

The call is simple in this time of degradation, if you call upon the name of Lord make sure that He is your portion, your slice of life, and it will never be taken. Build on that, my friend, and the trip to Egypt won't be so bad.