The Portion That Cannot Be Taken

On Learning to Desire Nothing but God

“O Lord, it is You who are my portion and cup; it is You Yourself who are my prize.”

—Psalm 16 (Grail Translation)

The fathers of the desert fled to barren places not because they despised the world, but because they had discovered a terrible truth: the human heart never ceases seeking a portion. Every soul longs to possess something that can say to it, “You are safe. You are loved. You will not die.”

Some seek this portion in reputation. Others in comfort, affection, usefulness, learning, ministry, or even religious consolations. But every created thing eventually reveals its poverty. It cannot bear the weight of our desire. It cannot save us from death. It cannot fill the abyss of the heart.

The psalmist therefore utters words that are both simple and fearsome: “O Lord, it is You who are my portion and cup.”

He says, not that God gives him a portion, but that God Himself is the portion.

This is the beginning of holiness.

The monk enters his cell and discovers that he possesses almost nothing. The room is small. The possessions are few. There is no applause and little distraction. Yet the cell becomes a furnace because there the soul is gradually stripped of every false inheritance. One by one, the idols fall. One by one, the heart’s secret dependencies are exposed.

The process is painful.

We discover how much we need to be noticed. How desperately we cling to our plans. How fiercely we defend our opinions. How secretly we demand affection and reassurance from others. We say with our lips, “God alone is enough,” while our hearts are held captive by a thousand little treasures.

The fathers insist that this unveiling is itself a mercy.

For how can God become our portion while our hands are full?

The psalm continues:

“I keep the Lord ever in my sight: since He is at my right hand, I shall stand firm.”

Notice that firmness comes not from strength of character but from nearness to God. We are unstable because we are divided. We look toward God and toward ourselves. Toward eternity and toward passing things. We wish to possess Christ and simultaneously preserve every earthly attachment.

This division tears the heart apart.

The saints are stable because they have become simple. They have one desire. They seek one thing. They possess one treasure.

And therefore they are free.

The psalm culminates in a cry of astonishing confidence:

“You will not leave my soul among the dead, nor let Your beloved know decay.”

The one who possesses God already stands on the edge of eternity. Even now he begins to live another kind of life. The world may take his health, his work, his friends, his reputation, even his body. Yet his treasure remains untouched because his treasure is not a thing that can perish.

This is why the elders could grow old without bitterness.

This is why they could live in obscurity without complaint.

This is why they could die in peace.

They had already surrendered everything that could be lost.

The tragedy of our age is not that we possess too little, but that we desire too many things. The heart is scattered among countless loves and therefore cannot rest. It lives in perpetual agitation because it fears the loss of what it cannot keep.

Psalm 16 calls us back to the simplicity of paradise.

Choose your portion.

If your portion is anything less than God, anxiety will become your constant companion. You will spend your life defending what time will inevitably take away.

But if the Lord becomes your portion and your cup, then even poverty becomes wealth, solitude becomes companionship, hiddenness becomes glory, and death itself becomes merely the final unveiling of the inheritance that has already begun.

The man who can truly say, “You, O Lord, are my portion,” has already entered the Kingdom.