The grocery cart announced Jed’s arrival long before he came into view. The front-left wheel squealed with each rotation, a metallic protest that had become his signature sound in Legalville.

Jed didn’t notice the town’s pitiful glances. After fifteen years of collecting cans and bottles, he had perfected the art of being simultaneously visible and invisible. Visible enough that people would set aside their recyclables for him. Invisible enough that they wouldn’t feel obligated to engage.

His cardboard refrigerator box stood in the narrow alley between First National Bank and Trust and Renaldo’s Bar and Grill—another of life’s ironies that was lost on no one but Jed himself. Each night, he would carefully maneuver through the flap he’d cut as a door, settle onto his frayed sleeping bag, and count the day’s earnings. On good days, it might be enough for a can of generic dog food. On exceptional days, he might splurge on a dented can of beans from the discount shelf. This had been Jed’s life for so long that he couldn’t remember anything else. Legalville’s boundaries were the boundaries of his world, and the daily rhythm of collection and survival was the only song he knew.

Until Tuesday.

The man in the charcoal suit looked comically out of place standing before Jed’s cardboard home, his polished shoes reflecting the afternoon sun. He held a leather briefcase in one hand and a document in the other.

“Mr. Jedidiah Lawrence?” the man asked, squinting at the paper.

Jed froze, his cart half-filled with the morning’s findings. Nobody had called him by his full name in years. Most folks in town didn’t even know he had a last name.

“That’s me,” he answered cautiously.

“My name is Thomas Blackwell, attorney-at-law.” The man extended his hand, then awkwardly retracted it when Jed didn’t reciprocate. “I have some news that I believe will be of great interest to you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jed sat on an overturned milk crate, staring at the document in his dirty hands. The words blurred before his eyes, but the number remained crystal clear: $2,000,000.

“Your uncle, Gerald Lawrence, passed away last month. Having no children of his own, he left his considerable estate to your father. Since your father passed away last year, you are the sole heir.”

“Two million dollars,” Jed whispered.

“Indeed,” Thomas nodded. “The funds have already been transferred to an account in your name. This card,” he produced a shiny black rectangle, “gives you immediate access to your inheritance.”

The next few hours passed in a blur. Someone from the local newspaper got wind of the story, and suddenly Jed’s alley was filled with cameras and microphones. People who had walked past him for years were now hanging on his every word.

“What will you do with the money, Jed?” a reporter shouted over the crowd.

“Are you going to move out of Legalville?” asked another.

Jed looked at the eager faces surrounding him, then at his cardboard home. A slow grin spread across his face, revealing the three remaining teeth he possessed.

“I’ve got it all planned out,” he announced.

The crowd leaned in.

“First thing, I’m gonna buy some new cardboard. The good kind, thick and sturdy. Gonna rebuild this place proper-like.”

Confused murmurs rippled through the crowd.

“Then,” Jed continued, warming to his subject, “no more generic dog food. I’m upgrading to the name brands! And Spam! Do you know how long it’s been since I had fried Spam for breakfast?”

A reporter stepped forward, microphone extended. “Jed, you understand you have two million dollars, right? You could buy a mansion. Travel the world. Never work another day in your life.”

Jed nodded enthusiastically. “That’s why I’m not stopping there. I’m getting plastic plates instead of paper ones! And the grocery store manager will sell me one of those big carts if I offer enough. Think of all the cans I could collect with a cart twice this size!”

The crowd fell silent.

“He doesn’t get it,” a woman whispered to her companion. “He just doesn’t get it.”

---

Jed’s story sounds absurd, doesn’t it? And yet many of us do exactly that.”

We have been given an inheritance beyond calculation. We are not distant relatives of royalty—we are children of the King himself. We have been transferred from one kingdom to another, from darkness to light. But how many of us are still pushing squeaky spiritual grocery carts through life? How many of us are settling for slightly better versions of our old existence rather than embracing the completely new life we’ve been given? The inheritance is already yours. The declaration has been made. But like Jed, many of us can’t look beyond our slum life into our new reality.

Your inheritance in Christ isn’t something you have to earn or deserve. It’s already yours—not because of anything you’ve done, but because of everything He has done.

The Father has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. He has rescued you from the dominion of darkness and brought you into the kingdom of His Son.

Today, you can choose to step out of your spiritual cardboard box. You can leave behind the dog food of the world. You can embrace your true identity and the unfathomable riches that are already yours in Christ.

Not because you’ve earned it.
Not because you deserve it.
But because you are loved.
And that makes all the difference.

“Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” Colossians 1:12-13

Being a parent is the perfect metaphor of “two steps forward, one step back.” It’s just the way things work in parenting. I thought about that as my youngest son wheeled out of the drive in his ’99 Subaru, loaded to the gills with his belongings to venture from the nest and into the great unknown. Parenting is uphill both ways. It’s not a race to the finish line. There is no finish line, and many days it’s a slow slog.

It’s like those moments when you get your kitchen so clean that you could be considered obsessive compulsive, and then you walk into a family room flooded with the chaos of matchbox cars, action figures, building blocks, and dinosaurs (some of them slathered with chocolate pudding cups). Two steps forward, one step back.

I don’t know how many times I’ve had to jump through all the hoops of getting the guys to bed, but now that we’re past that stage, I’ve realized that hoop jumping was my superpower. A certain number of pages must be read, teeth need to be brushed, prayers must be said, and covers need to be adjusted. And just at the right time, they’d crave water like a Labrador Retriever in the Sahara Desert. It seemed like my boys were never tired until they collapsed. Darlene and I said what all parents say from time to time: “It’s not about how tired you are, it’s about how tired you are making us.” After our last son, we relaxed as parents. We were so busy with the schedules of Upward Basketball, birthdays, carpools, parties, and science projects, we’d find him sprawled out on the family room floor with a half-eaten fruit roll-up in his little hand. Two steps forward, one step back.

We’ve missed a lot of adventures because we had kids. We’ve never been to those luxury resorts with crystal blue waters and not a stroller in a hundred miles. But we’ve been to a few amusement parks and wrestled a wild, squirming five-year-old for thirty minutes to administer amoxicillin. We found these moments both traumatizing and, I must confess, somewhat exciting. Sometimes they get so dirty, the bathtub was out of the question. They were backyard, spray-them-down-with-the-water-hose dirty. We found parenting a rewarding rollercoaster ride of sound and fury, signifying a whole lot of stuff. Two steps forward, one step back.

I’m not a perfect parent, and we didn’t raise perfect kids. Becoming a good father has been two steps forward and one step back. I said, “Maybe” when I was really thinking, Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. For years I’ve stolen peanut butter cups from my sons on November 1^st. I’ve made stuff up when the answers to their questions would require more wisdom and intelligence than I have at 5:30 in the morning. But now that they are gone, we still hear their voices echoing quietly through the house in our memories. They robbed our peace but stole our hearts. And that’s for good. We treasure the days they return as adults for holidays and celebration. Our roles as parent have changed. We made progress even though it was two steps forward and one step back.

Don’t you love the process of putting all your earthly possessions in boxes and moving across the country? I didn’t think so. Who would?  I’d much prefer staying in one place but for some reason God has other plans. When we move ourselves without the assistance of professionals we look like the Beverly Hillbillies. If you’re too young to understand the reference, go to YouTube. That’s pretty much us, with the exception of Grandma in the rocking chair on the flatbed. But God always shows up in mysterious ways.  

Before we left, my wife had her car stuffed with our belongings and I was in the moving van.  I left earlier than she did and before we parted I asked her to take my laptop bag. It was really the one thing I could not lose. I didn’t want it in the back on the truck where it could be crushed under the weight of a refrigerator loaded by unskilled teenagers. 

Somewhere on a Mississippi interstate I got the call: “Hello, are you Matt Tullos.” I said, “yes” and he continued.” I found your laptop in the middle of Main Street. I thought it was my lucky day. I found a brand-new highfaluting computer! But then I looked closer and saw that Bible of yours, all marked up and I thought to myself, Lordy, it’s a preacher-computer. I’m not a church-going guy but one thing I do know, is that you don’t want the wrath of God poured out on you for hijacking preacher stuff. Your number was in the Bible and so I’m calling you.” 

After I thanked him profusely and we got off the phone. My wife called me in tears. “Something terrible has happened!” Before she got too worked up over the whole thing I told her about the unchurched angel that found it. Darlene’s trunk had popped open a few minutes before I got the call. We were both relieved. In a matter of an hour the laptop and Bible were both safe and sound in the cab of her car. She rewarded him handsomely for being such an unexpected hero in the midst of our pilgrimage.

I’m so glad I wrote my name and number in the Bible. This custom has saved me many times. I’ve mindlessly left my Bibles in places all over the US like an overly enthusiastic Gideon. This time it saved my Bible and a new Macbook Pro. It was a wonderful tap on the shoulder from God in the middle of transitional chaos.  

Jesus came
for the wise and the strong.
And He came, just as well, for the rest of us.
Jesus came for the days that life seemed ordered and filled with meaning.
But we rejoice because He came for the other days, too.
Blessed by old men and shepherds
Worshiped by kings and beggars
And the rest in between.
He loves us still.
He did not come to receive just our joy and elation.

He came for the rest of us.
He came for our doubts, our burdens, our sorrows and grief.
He even came for the times when we doubted His presence.
He reached down to us.
When our loneliness seemed unbearable.

His love courted us.
And His mercy enveloped us.
His holiness consumed us.
God’s advent of grace put the pieces of our broken lives together.
Along the path of our lives we’ve heard of blessed souls who could manage their problems, pick themselves up, find the reasons for all of life’s challenges.
But thank God, that He came for the rest of us!
Not just our good.
But also the rest of us.

He came to celebrate our youth but when our youth is spent,
He celebrates with even greater passion, the rest of us.
He came for the people of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Judea.
But He also came for the rest of us.
So now He compels us to shout to the world, the joy of a coming King.
So that every person can hear the invitation to join…

The rest of us.

He came… for the rest of us.