St. James Prayer Break Gathering for 06 23 2026

June 23, 2026
The focus of St. James Presbyterian Church’s weekly 30-minute Prayer Break Gathering is based on one of the scriptures of our PCUSA Daily Lectionary, Matthew 19.23-30.  Today we will be focusing our thoughts on verses 26b.  Today as you read the scripture, may your discernment in the Spirit bring ease.
Matthew 19.23-30
23Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." 25When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, "Then who can be saved?" 26But Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible."
27Then Peter said in reply, "Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?" 28Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life. 30But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.
Meditation: When Possibility Has Already Spoken
Jesus has just spoken a hard word. He says to the disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Then he presses the image even further: “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Jesus names the difficulty without closing the door. Wealth can make the kingdom hard to enter because it teaches the soul to cling, to protect itself, and to mistake possession for security. Jesus is not saying that the rich are beyond God’s reach. He is telling the truth about how difficult it is to enter God’s way while holding tightly to the very things that make us feel important, protected, and above others.
And maybe, strange as it sounds, there is comfort in that truth for the disciples. They have left much behind. They have stepped away from boats and nets, tax tables and household expectations, familiar roads and settled lives. They are not rich in the way Jesus is describing. They are not protected by wealth or carried by systems that make life easy. They are following Jesus without the cushions of power around them.
So when Jesus says how hard it is for those who are rich to enter the kingdom, something in their spirits may exhale. Not because they wish harm on anyone. Not because they want the rich excluded. Yet because they need assurance that God sees what the world ignores: the difference between those who cling to abundance and those who have risked everything for the way of life. Heaven is not fooled by what the world applauds, and the kingdom of God does not simply reproduce the arrangements of earth, where the rich get richer, the powerful protect their own power, and those with the most often act as though they are entitled to even more.
The disciples are astounded. They ask, “Then who can be saved?” And right there, in the middle of the passage, Jesus gives the anchor. Jesus looks at them and says, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”
That is the word. That is the blessing. That is the good news set right in the center. Human beings cannot untangle ourselves by achievement, control, or willpower. Grace cannot be manufactured. The kingdom cannot be forced into being by our own hands. For mortals, it is impossible.
Yet for God, all things are possible.
In God’s presence, the grip of wealth can loosen, the fear of not having enough can be healed, envy can be shaken from the soul, worry can be soothed, and the future can open beyond what we are able to see from where we stand today.
And still, Peter asks, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
I love Peter for that question. I love him because he sounds like us. Jesus has just opened the horizon of divine possibility, and Peter brings the conversation back to human accounting. “We have left everything. What then will we have?”
That is not Peter speaking to Jesus as the Christ in fullness. That is Peter talking to his teacher from the place of his worry. He is still calculating, comparing, processing, and wondering whether the sacrifice has been worth it. He wants to know whether following Jesus will lead to anything secure, visible, measurable, or fair.
And we know that place: hearing assurance and still asking, “Yes, yet what about me?” believing in God’s possibility while aching over what we do not have; trusting God while wondering why others seem to have more; giving, serving, praying, laboring, forgiving, showing up, and quietly asking, “What then will we have?”
The meditation enters Peter’s humanity, not some polished spirituality where envy never touches us, fear never visits us, and comparison never pulls at us. It comes after Jesus has spoken possibility and before Peter has learned how to rest in it.
And Jesus does not shame him. Jesus does not push Peter away. Jesus answers with promise: renewal, a world reordered, a hundredfold, eternal life, and the assurance that many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.
That is not merely a reversal of status. That is a revelation of God’s justice. The world’s line is not God’s line. The world’s ranking is not God’s ranking. The world may treat wealth as proof of worth, power as proof of blessing, and accumulation as proof of wisdom. Yet Jesus tells us that God is not bound by the world’s order. The first will not always be first. The last will not always be left behind. Those who seem to have nothing may be standing closer to the kingdom than those who seem to have everything.
So today, in prayer, we allow this word to massage our humanity: the worry, the counting, the ache beneath the question, “What then will we have?” With gentleness and faith, we begin to release the fear that God has forgotten us, the envy that makes another person’s abundance feel like our lack, the worry that our sacrifices have disappeared into nothing, and the small imagination that says what we see now is all that will ever be.
God has already brought us this far, carrying us through days we did not know how to survive, opening ways where we saw only walls, giving strength when our strength was gone, and placing people, provision, courage, mercy, and grace along the road. God has not failed to be God.
“For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”
That does not make everything easy. It declares that impossibility is not the final word, that the powers of this world do not get to define the future, and that wealth, scarcity, fear, and Peter’s anxious question do not get the last word.
God’s possibility has already spoken.
So we pray from that place, with questions like Peter and worries like the disciples, trusting that Jesus has looked at us with mercy and told us what is true. What remains beyond our making, reordering, healing, or releasing is still held within God’s possibility.
And maybe this is the grace for today: to stop rolling over the blessing. To stop rushing past the word that has already been given. To pause long enough to hear it again, not as a slogan, not as a decoration, not as something we say because we are supposed to sound faithful, yet as bread for the spirit and strength for the road.
“For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”
May that word rest where worry has been living, shine where envy has been hiding, breathe where fear has tightened the chest, and answer the question, “What then will we have?” not with a ledger, yet with trust.
The first shall be last. The last shall be first. God is still turning the world toward justice, making a future beyond what power can imagine, and holding those who have left much, given much, endured much, and wondered much. God remains possible where we have run out of possibility.
So as we enter prayer, we bring our Peter questions. We bring our worries, our comparisons, our holy fatigue, our anxious accounting, our longing for assurance. And we bring them into the presence of the One who does not shame our humanity, yet calls us beyond it into trust.
Knowing that for God all things are possible . . . for what do you pray?