August 16

Poor yet rich

“As having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Cor. 6:10).
“There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches” (Prov. 13:7).
“All things that the Father hath are mine” (John 16:15).

Sister Eva, the daughter of wealthy parents, disappointed her father’s hopes by her work among the orphans and elderly while still very young. Eventually she obtained his consent and soon consumed all her personal wealth in her work among poor and needy. When she died, she left a large deaconess order known as the Friedenshort Sisterhood. Here then is a personal testimony from one who knew both wealth and poverty:
“Early in life the Spirit of God taught me to love poverty and awakened in me the desire for uttermost self-denial. I sought to regard whatever was entrusted to me as only borrowed. Personal possessions seemed to me like an injustice against the many who live in want, and it was only because it provided me with the possibility of giving, that I became reconciled to the heavy burden and responsibility of the stewardship of earthly goods. I did not have to bear the weight of that burden long. There was enough want in the world to give me an early opportunity of being freed from my wealth, and I was allowed to go the easy and blessed way of voluntary poverty.

“And yet—strange paradox—with all this longing to have nothing, to possess nothing, I find within myself an intense and large delight in the thought of the universal wealth which I share with all my brethren in Christ as the child and heir of my heavenly Father.

“Mine is the earth, and the worlds in their fullness,
Mine every ocean, and mountain, and hill;
Mine are the stars in the firmament’s stillness,
Mine are the clouds as they wander at will.

“Oh, the unsearchable, incomprehensible, infinite riches that I may call mine in the realm of nature and in the realm of grace! Everything belongs to me, and the more I receive and enjoy, share and give again, the richer I become and the richer all others. As I think of it, my heart is flung wide and set free and filled with audacity, the audacity as of a child, who, pointing to his father’s house and garden and field, says: ‘All this is mine!’”

If He has given us all things, have we any business to live as spiritual paupers? Half the reason why we don’t praise Him as we ought is because we don’t really believe what great things He has given us. Oh, “consider what great things he hath done for you” (1 Sam. 12:24).

—Frances Ridley Havergal.

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