kingdom

We live like people who expect to be around forever. Many have ceased to watch the eastern sky. Many no longer pray “Maranatha—come quickly, Lord Jesus.” Many would frankly be disappointed to see all of this come to an end. We’ve settled in—we’ve bought long term CD’s, built houses and lands, gotten comfortable. We’ve given our place of watchfulness over to conspiracy nuts and book peddlers. But make no mistake—Jesus said there will come a time when the King will appear in all His glory. There will be a reckoning. There will be judgment. The old will be rent apart…all things will become new, and just, and full of life.

During my college years, at about this time I would pack up all my earthly goods into the back seat of a 1968 Black Beetle with holes in the floorboard and head off for Tennessee and school at Milligan.  Do you remember traveling lightly like that?  I got married, we got a job, bought a little trailer, but still we traveled lightly.  All it took was a little Chevette to haul our stuff around.  When it came time to move to California, we had a child, but we still carried everything we needed in a VW bus.  Then life started to get more complicated...I began to acquire things like insurance, and pensions, and car seats, and microwaves, and books and stereos, and winter clothes, and books, and tools, and toys, and books and STUFF.  When we moved to Tennessee,  we packed everything we had in one 25 foot moving van.  Now, more than ten years later...I guess it would take a semi trailer to move us again.  I bought a pickup truck to move our stuff around; I built a storage shed this year to pack away more belongings (and to store away half a dozen other peoples’ “stuff” too.  I like my stuff.  I rely on my stuff...from my air conditioner that knocks the heat off the day to my retirement account that will hopefully help me slide by in our older years without having to go the poor farm to my TV that I watch the Cubs on to the lawn mower that cuts the grass just the way I like it.  I don’t have any more or less than the next guy down the street, do I?  Then why do I get sort of an uneasy feeling when Jesus says, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions?”