My mother-in-law
wears a ruby ring which she found by a railroad track in Oklahoma when she was
a child. There has always been speculation as to why the ring was in that
location. Did the owner break an engagement and toss it out the train window?
Was it stolen property? Was a child using it to play dress-up and accidently
dropped it? After the recent tornados there are parts of people’s lives strewn
for miles across the mid-west. There could be ruby rings in lakes, ponds and
trees. “The kingdom of heaven is like
treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in
his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” (Matt 13:44 NIV)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----The one thing we can know most is that we know far less than we certainly do know. But the one thing we know best is that the greatest thing we can know we have definitely been told. People fail to give these two truisms enough thought in perceiving the course of their lives. We want to perceive our own particular life as a journey for which we have a great deal of latitude to choose which directions we go and which roads we take. Using the knowledge of where we’ve been, we perceive who we are and what we have, then speculate who we need to become and what we need to gain. This extension of our perception is made only of speculation about those parts of the upcoming roads being much the same as the parts we’ve already experienced and about our getting there with what we have. But we figure it all out anyway. Then we invest our emotions in these speculations with only a superficial thought given to the very real possibility that our investments may go south, because we do not want to fully acknowledge that we can not see down any road much further than the present moment.
-----Tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, war, thieves - the world has no end of means for destroying the continuity of our lives. My wife is in Pennsylvania today; tomorrow she begins her drive home. Although my speculation that she will make it home is most certainly probable, it isn’t guaranteed. And if she did not make it home, I would join those people who have had parts of their lives strewn for miles. The duty to care for what we have in the moment requires a great investment in what is upon the road with us presently. But the fact that in the choosing of our directions we only participate with uncontrollable factors requires a readiness to divest in what’s on the road now so we can also care for what there will be where we are driven against our will.
-----That readiness to divest honors our knowledge of not knowing in particular so we can make a greater investment in what we’ve been told in general. What we’ve been told in general is that we who’ve come to Christ are not our own, that our lives serve His purposes in their proceeding to a glorious destination, and that between the present moment and that destination are much comfort and many joys to be had in tragedies and successes alike. Then the continuity of our lives moves from speculations about enjoying what we have to the experience of enjoying who we are in Christ always and what we have only when we actually have it. This is why His treasure for us is so great and what gets blown away in the wind is merely stuff. In both the good and the bad we are humbled.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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