The Lord Is My Portion

The Lord Is My Portion

Hudson Taylor, pioneer missionary to China, was frequently in physical deprivation and financial crisis. His famous declaration — 'Christ is the source; abiding in Him is the condition; his fullness is the supply' — was not a theological abstraction but a lived testimony. In one of his lowest seasons, he wrote to his mother: 'I have learned that the man who has God for his treasure has all things in one. Many ordinary people have something. But I have Everything, because I have the One who owns everything.' He had land where there was a famine, health that had been repeatedly broken, money that had repeatedly run out. He had God. He found that God was enough.

Lamentations 3 is the center of the most grief-saturated book in the Bible. The author — Jeremiah, or someone writing in his spirit — sits in the rubble of a destroyed city and confesses: 'The LORD is my portion.' The word 'portion' (chelaq) was a land-allotment term — the share of inheritance given to each person. In a world where land was wealth, your portion was your security. Jeremiah declares that God Himself is his share, his inheritance, his security. This is not a statement made from comfortable circumstances. It is made from rubble. And because it is made from rubble, it carries weight that no prosperity-theology version of contentment can match. God is enough when God is all you have. And God is all you have more often than we acknowledge.