The Lord is my portion

A confession: on icy days, I love my bed. I turn on the electric blanket and fill my metre-long hot water bottle (what a great invention!)  All is cosy until the alarm rudely jangles into my dreams and I face the daunting prospect of leaving my snug duvet. I tell myself I will count to 10 and then get up. And then start counting again.. Strangely, I am still in bed. I’m mystified by my friends who bounce up and go outdoor-swimming in the equivalent of my freezer.

On Wednesday, I finally got up and oh, what a sunrise! Written across it in my mind’s eye is a verse that has stuck with me all week: “You are my portion, O Lord” Psalm 119:57

Do you, like me, need reminding that God is your portion? That word “portion” reminds me of when I was younger, leaning over my mum as she divided up her legendary chocolate sponge pudding, sternly checking the portion sizes. Inside, I can still be like that, checking is there enough? How is my portion size? Why is yours bigger? When life goes swimmingly, the questions dissipate but when life is wintry, can I trust that God will be my portion? Is God enough?

We all have challenges that force us to ask if God is enough. Without Trevor, is God enough? That has been a hard question for me – one I daily face but every time I draw close to God, he promises me that he is. Yet the questions keep coming. I’m growing older: is God enough? Work is pressurised: is God enough? The world’s a mess: is God enough? Fill in the blank for you and ask yourself – is God enough?  

Jeremiah was afflicted and mocked and feared God rejected him, but yet he trusted,

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” Lamentations 3

 Do you too need to say to yourself, “The Lord is my portion?” When life is wintry, the Lord promises to be enough. It is a repeated promise in Scripture, which makes it worth seizing. God says that he will be our portion, our inheritance. And it’s not an inheritance that only arrives when we die, it’s an inheritance now because Jesus died. Trusting in Christ makes us heirs of the promise of blessing (Gal 3). True - the fullness of the inheritance doesn’t come yet but we get the Holy Spirit as the down-payment and that is no small deposit. The deposit is God himself. God gives us himself!!!

 Wherever you are, however hard life is, God is your portion. I gave a lecture on Joseph this week, enslaved and exiled, dumped in prison for 13 years and yet trusting. It made my brain tilt – the Lord was with him in prison. Because God is our portion, we can be content in all circumstances (Phil 4).

Does that make our physical circumstances irrelevant? Definitely not! Don’t tell a starving child that God is enough for them without providing a meal. God created us as material beings and cares for us tangibly. Joseph was only in prison so that God could make sure his people didn’t physically starve. If I don’t eat and exercise, I’ll die. Similarly, without friends, I’ll emotionally wither. God made us to need calories and exercise and community and I have a part to play in all of the above both for myself and as part of God’s church which is called to feed the hungry and care for the lonely.

 But it remains true - only God offers a joy beyond our circumstances. As Augustine wrote long ago, “there is a joy that is not given to those who do not love you, but only to those who love you for your own sake. You yourself are their joy.” Confessions X.22

 Whether life is wintry or easy, the Lord promises to be enough for us – .

 LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. 

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.  Psalm 16:5-6