BIBLE BITES
No Armoured Vehicles at Cemetery
Have you been crunching the numbers lately on your calculator? Is your wealth increasing at the rate your Investment Manager said it would? Are your savings and investments quadrupling within the timeframes you had envisioned? Perhaps that’s not the question you needed to be asked today. If the sluggish economy has gotten me all bent out of shape and all I can see are dark clouds on the horizon, then I am living for the wrong thing.
One of the beauties of reading the Bible is – God speaks to us through His Word and if we are willing, He will calibrate our perspective with His. Some verses, more than others, pierce the heart like an arrow. When we are open to hearing His Voice, not many verses and very little study is required to be reminded of the emptiness and short-sightedness of shallow living. What kind of life are you living?
Psalm 49 makes it clear – there will be no armoured vehicles in our funeral procession carrying our possessions from our safety deposit boxes, secret stashes and investments accounts. Our fancy homes and our summer convertible sports car will not be loaded on to flat bed trucks, along with our boat, and carried to the cemetery. Our newest iPads, Blackberry’s and Android’s, fine China dishes and elegant, posh furnishings, our don’t-dare-touch-me ornaments, vintage guns and memorable golf clubs, Gucci wardrobe collections, etc. – well, how can I break the news gently? The bottom line is – it all stays here! If that is all I have in life, I have nothing.
Psalm 49:10-11 says it so bluntly eloquent:
“They leave their wealth to others.
Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue forever
and their dwelling places to all generation;
they call their lands after their own names…..”
Vs. 17: “When he dies he shall carry nothing away…”
Absalom was a Bible character who erected a monument in a valley and called it – guess what? “Absalom.” (2 Samuel 18:18) But dear Absalom lost it all and lost his soul.
The writer to the Hebrews noted this about the Christians then:
“You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property,
since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.
(Hebrews 10:34)
The writer encourages the Christians, reminding them how they smiled when their persecutors broke into their homes and stripped them bare of all their possessions. “Remember how you just smiled when they stole all your stuff, because you knew they could never touch your real treasure.”
What do I treasure today? What makes a smile come over my face? Can the enemy touch my real treasure? When I daydream – what kind of treasures excite me? Invest for eternity. Make today count for Christ. Live for Him.
Walk carefully and closely with the Lord today,
Peter Ramsay