Jesus says: “I am the light which is on them all. I am the All, and the All has gone out from me and the All has come back to me. Split a piece of wood and I am there. Lift the stone and there you shall find me!”
If there is a Hall of Fame for the most profound sayings of Jesus from Thomas, this one would be on my personal favorites list. Here, Jesus says that he is the light which shines on everyone, everywhere. He identifies himself with the “All” which can only refer to the One True Divine Source which he often refers to as “Father,” or that we may call “God.” Not only does Jesus claim to be the All, he tells us that the “All has gone out” from himself and that “the All has come back” to himself. The going out and the coming back is to be understood as a single motion. Both the emanating from God and the return to God are the same thing. The unity of the All is not changed in any way by the going out or the coming back. Our assurance then is that we are also the All which has gone out and we are the All which will come back to the Divine Source, because there is no separation between us and the All, or between the All and us.
This reality of unbroken Oneness with the All is illustrated beautifully by the final phrase: “Split a piece of wood and I am there. Lift the stone and there you shall find me.” In other words, Jesus and the All are to be found in everything, everywhere. The illusion of separation is just that: an illusion. Jesus – who is the All – inhabits all things; every piece of wood, every stone, every square inch of matter in the universe, and every single one of us, no matter who we are, or where we live, or when we live in space or time. The All is all. The All is everywhere. The All will never become separate. The All ebbs and flows and yet is always the one All that shines on everywhere. There is nowhere we can go where the All is not. There is nowhere we can be where the All cannot be found. Every blade of grass, every gust of wind, every shining star, every living thing, every stone, river, tree, and material thing is the All, and the All is everything.
This means that the All – or God – is the One in whom we all live and move and have our being. It also means that the All – or God – lives and moves and has being in every one of us.
This circle is unbroken. This reality is all there is. We, like Jesus, can look ourselves in the mirror and repeat these same words: “I am the All, and the All has gone out from me, and All has come back to me. Split a piece of wood and the All is there. Lift the stone and there you will find the All.”
You are not who you are with the eternal Divine presence of God, and God is not who God is without your life and presence in this place at this time. Or, as the Apostle Paul once phrased it, “Christ is all and is in all.” [Col. 3:11]
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Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has appeared on CNN, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.” He hosts the Second Cup with Keith podcast, and co-hosts the Apostates Anonymous podcast, and the Heretic Happy Hour Podcast.
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