Cares of this life

"But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with...cares of this life" (Luke 21:34).

Anyone who has bought a home knows what I talking about...Brokers, Realtors, Mortgage lenders...they weigh you down. Jesus is so right---"Lest your hearts be weighed down." The cares of life trap us in fog. My eyes are dizzy as I wined through woods and gaze at the houses perched within the dense foliage. 'Boy, that's a nice view'....ah-ah-ah, "Watch yourselves." I find myself staring, and asking, "Well, just what if I could get a house a little bigger, like that one?"---I feel that question squeezing the Holy Spirit right out of me. Oh how many are the "Cares of this life." May God teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. 2000 square feet or 20,000 square feet, either way, from dust we came and to dust we shall return. And in the meantime, "The years of our life are but seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble, they are soon gone, and we fly away" (Psalm 90:10).

Reality Grace

We live life and then...

...What does it all amount too...?

Do you live to pay off debt... raise a family...?

Wait, my alarm... I can't forget to set it... it gets me up...

Sometimes it seems so pointless...

But God is so gracious by the pointless he throws us in, in it
we find that he is the only point.

Only one thing is necessary...

OH LORD, make me feel pointless all day long to find the one thing necessary!

Sojourn and Exile

"All these died in faith, without receiving the promises...having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth" (Hebrews 11:13). Hebrews 11:13 teaches this: If you believe in Christ, your life on earth is exile.

True, God calls us to be stewards of his creation, and to redeem the time. But God also calls us sojourners and exiles on earth. That is tension. Enhance life earth, remember your exile. Love your emenies, hate your mother and father and wife. Be slaves to serve men because you are free in Christ; be free from men because you are a slave to Christ.

All the tribulation, pain, unmet longing, all the disappoints of spouses and the guilt felt when we wrong a loved one, all of life under the cruse is endurable because we have new birth in Christ and are in his love us that liberates us to embrace all agony in our exile.