September 02, 2010
It's a Keeper
We continue to refurbish the house and the cost keeps going up as we find other ‘little’ jobs that we might as well do while we’re at it. I find myself justifying the ongoing project by thinking of it as an investment. However, Paul burst my bubble in his discourse on how we should live, “What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep…” (1 Cor 7:29-30 NIV) I have to tell you that we’ve been working on this house as though it were ours to keep….it certainly never crossed my mind that all these improvements might be for someone else.
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Gail;
-----God assured Israel that if they were faithful to Him, then they would get to live in all the houses they built and enjoy all the vineyards they planted. Yet, Ecclesiastes also assures us that or investments are all vanity, for in the end, we will be ploughed into the dirt, and others will enjoy what we built. You can not say which it is, because it is both. One’s life blows through the time of this world like a bug in the wind. But even so, for the moment it is in this time, it has a place. Yet that bug’s investment in its place is no more worthy of investment than is the wind which drives it out of time.
-----”Only, let everyone lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him.” (I Cor 7:17) ”For by the grace given to me I bid everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.” (Rom 12:3) God has placed you in a house beautiful by the standards of this fleeting wind. And for these moments you have on this earth, it is yours to enjoy, or to trade, or to dispose. Others have received a faith from the Lord having no attachment to property or places so they can drift among the people with His gospel on their lips. That is the life to which He has called them, a life in which property is an anchor more than an investment.
-----But this is the wonder of the Lord. To one, a home is an asset, to another it is a liability. But what it is to each is accordingly proper. But even to you, the fact that the wind will eventually blow you beyond this house does not disqualify your effort and investment in it. For the wind will also blow another into that house, and they will enjoy what you will have done to it. So, also by the wonder of the Lord, the hard work you put into your home is an investment in both your home and in a labor of love towards those who will enjoy it after you.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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