This morning I think of the lame man who sat by the Gate of the Temple called Beautiful. I think of a man who knew nothing more than crippled and twisted extremities, and poverty. A man who thought the answer to his impairment was silver and gold. And I think of two men who wouldn't give him what he wanted if they could.

Because what he wanted wasn't even a portion of what God wanted for Him.

I position myself by the rich ones, the ones who enter the temple because they're worthy or they think they are. I set up camp outside the gold and ask for silver because I want to eat, I want to feed on something more than leftovers and spare change. I want a feast before my body wastes from lack of motion and debilitation.

But I haven't thought to ask for more.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, all of humanity knows this. We have grown so accustomed to deferred hopes and heartsickness that we have stopped hoping and we lie in our handicaps.

What was his? What is mine? (What is yours?)

Our handicap, all of us, is that we are debilitated by circumstances and theology and family and pasts and sin and hopes and knowledge. Our handicap is that we do not expect what only God can give.

He wanted what only men could give, alms and loose change. Peter and John gave what only God could give, a hope and a future and healing.

What is our expectation? What is my hope? What have I asked for without prefaces and addendums? Where I have I positioned myself? And from Whom am I asking for handouts?

What is my measure?

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.

Ephesians 3:16-20

My measure is more than I'm asking for now.