september 2007
Last week Becky and I were working as staff for the elementary WoW (Week of Worship) camp at Wesley Woods. It was a wonderful time of worship, activities, getting to know God, and getting to know youth from all around the West Michigan Conference. It was also a week of isolation from the outside world.
While we were there, we heard about the rapidly dropping stock market driven by reported troubles in the housing loan market. I was immediately alarmed remembering the losses we had taken in our retirement savings back in the crash following the attack on the world trade centers. It took years to recover from the losses then and I saw (at least in my own mind) the same thing happening again. It’s wasn’t that we had a lot in there, but it had taken us so long to get what we had accumulated. What would we do if we lost our retirement savings? Could we afford to lose what we had? Part of me wanted to get home to move those funds into something less volatile. That part of me was beginning to panic because I couldn’t.
And then suddenly it dawned on me; where was I putting my faith and trust? Was I putting it in God? Or was I putting it in what we had acquired – in stuff. My mind immediately went to Jesus’ parable of the rich man who had built large barns to store up his great riches. I remembered how he felt secure in his possessions; placing his trust in what he had and not in God; yet that very night his life would end and all that he had acquired would mean nothing – nothing at all. I can’t begin to describe what a humbling revelation that was! The real issues of life are far bigger than our measly savings.
We live in a precarious world. We can’t afford to take anything for granted – least of all our spiritual health. Who would have thought on September 10, 2001 that in less then twenty four hours the World Trade Center would lie in a pile of twisted ruble with such a tremendous loss of life? Who would have thought as the world celebrated Christmas Day in 2004 that within a few short hours nearly one quarter of a million people would die because of a massive tsunami that swept through Southeast Asia? I’m sure that the last day of their lives began like any other day. They were all oblivious to the fact that “that very day their souls would be required of them”. These types of things happen to people every day; maybe not on such a grand scale but they happen. Those who have their faith and hope in God made it through the trials this world throws at us; those who didn’t… I grieve for them.
Our worlds can turn up side down in an instant; everything that we have in this world can change forever in the blink of an eye. I’m not saying that we need to go through life worrying about what might happen next, because we shouldn’t. We need to trust in God.
If our faith and hope is grounded in God through Jesus Christ, it doesn’t really matter what the world throws at us. That’s because we know that everything we have here ultimately belongs to God, who through his grace, has allowed us the use of what we have for a time. What we lose wasn’t ours in the first place.
The Apostle Paul would say that as Christians, our eyes are fixed on the prize that is before us; the one of true worth and eternal that we have in Jesus Christ. Nothing in this world can begin to compare to what we have as children of a God who loves us enough that he sent his Son to save us. Don’t allow your selves to be deceived into thinking otherwise. What we have in this world is temporary; but what we do with it matters. Use what God has blessed you with but use wisdom. Keep your eyes on Christ and do all you do to the glory of God. Focus on those things that truly matter; the things that last and even in the darkness of this world you will have the light that the darkness can never extinguish.
Grace and Peace, The Rev. Rob Hughes
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