May 06, 2010

Greener Grass

The house next door is a rental property and over the years we’ve watched renters come and go. One tenant will spend the summer tilling, seeding and watering the yard, then he leaves and the next guy moves in and lets the yard revert back to nature. The last neighbor’s Labrador pup dug so many holes that the yard could have passed for a prairie dog colony. However the children in the family loved driving their Tonka trucks around the pocked marked terrain. Similar to watching the yard next door, I picture God watching our spiritual lot. We have to decide if we’re going to make the grass greener or just play in the dirt.

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----I keep a focus on, “...Thy Kingdom come...” in the template for prayer Jesus taught. It comes not only at the end of every life and not only at the end of this present age, but it comes also during the life of everyone who acknowledges Him. For in actuality we are all only renting the spell of time we have to live our lives as well as the things we have in our lives and the control we enjoy over all of these. The day comes when the Lord requires everything back from each renter.
-----A renter must pay additional attention to his attitudes. An owner has direct mental and emotional attachment to his property. Everything he thinks and feels about it involves care of it, either for the usefulness he acquires from it or the value of it he can maintain in the prospect of trading it for something else he will find more useful. But the renter has only direct attachment to the usefulness of the property he rents. He does not have any prospect of trading the property for something more useful because he does not own it. Therefore, in order for the renter to have a further sense of value maintenance, he must have a sense of obligation to the landlord. Otherwise his sense for keeping up the property will have no respect for the property’s condition once he abandons it back to the landlord.
-----We focus too much upon the lease period of our lives. We know an end comes. Nature itself teaches this, because all things die. The fear of the end trains man to hope for something beyond the end, but only the Word of God lays down the logic for that something and teaches the facts and circumstances about it. As a person comes to understand its truths about life, his focus begins to include the fact that the end of life is not the end of life, but only the end of a rental agreement. The property will return to God in whatever condition the renter has made of it. If the property has been kept up with the values of God’s kingdom, He will keep it and use it in His kingdom for eternity. If not, He will just throw it away. He has more.

Love you all,
Steve Corey