The Wrong of Return

For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.  If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. – Hebrews 11:14-15

There have been times, I will admit, when I have thought it might be pleasant or at least convenient to go back to the old way of living, to close my eyes to reality, to pretend and to believe the delusion for a while.  From time to time, I stumble over faith.  Righteousness has its trials.  We feel alienated.  So much of what seems to captivate worldlings appears to us to be empty, as nourishing as sawdust.  We may wonder what we are missing.  The non-believer or the nominal believer -- i.e., the person who “believes in God and all that”, may be quite content and happy with his or her place in life.

When the man known as Abram left Ur of the Chaldeans, he left behind many who were satisfied with their lot and their gods.  Like millions today, they did not believe that there could be a better land, a better city, or a better life.  “I hear a voice calling,” the song says.  “It must be my Lord.”  Abram heard that Voice; those he left behind did not hear it or chose to ignore it. 

Moses, an exile in the land of Midian, named his son Gershom, for, he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.  The Dead said, What a long, strange trip it’s been.  I can identify with both.  Right now, I’m probably inclined to be less attached to this life than I was a month ago, but it has been a long time since I believed that my earthly existence was anything other than a passage to the truly significant. 

We are not talking about physical death and new life in heaven.  Heaven begins when we turn from the world.  Eternal life begins, not at the edge of the open grave but at the moment we turn to Christ, the Open Door.  Who that has stepped through the Door and entered into the land where light is as solid as gold would turn away to the ghostly, hopeless, leaf-on-the-wind existence he knew before? 

“If they had been thinking of that land …” – that was the mistake the Israelites made as they wandered through the desert.  They dwelt by their thoughts in Egypt still.  They longed for that from which they had not turned.  Instead of looking ahead and seeking the kingdom -- the Land of Promise, the land of milk and honey, they spoke of melons and onions – bitter enough when they could have them, now sweetened and enriched by memory. 

Sometimes I am no better when I think of the past as a land to which I would return, to moments when I would do things differently, when I think, If I had known then what I know now.  I forget that those moments were the path that led me to this Door, to the land of resurrection where that which has died as seed lives again in full bloom.  God will forgive us our sighs and even turn them to smiles as we press on.

To be happy on this journey we need only [s]et [our] minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth (Colossians 3:2).

Up Above My Head

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. -- Colossians 3:2

Since my Bible came open on Colossians 3 again this morning, I figured I might as well stay there.  By the way, if you haven’t yet read Father Stephen’s post, “Sin is not a moral problem”, you’ll probably like it, and it goes along with what we’re thinking about in Colossians. 

I’m feeling a little lazy today – like today’s any different, so let me pull a quote from Matthew Henry that covers the first four verses:

As Christians are freed from the ceremonial law, they must walk the more closely with God in gospel obedience. As heaven and earth are contrary one to the other, both cannot be followed together; and affection to the one will weaken and abate affection to the other. Those that are born again are dead to sin, because its dominion is broken, its power gradually subdued by the operation of grace, and it shall at length be extinguished by the perfection of glory. To be dead, then, means this, that those who have the Holy Spirit, mortifying within them the lusts of the flesh, are able to despise earthly things, and to desire those that are heavenly. Christ is, at present, one whom we have not seen; but our comfort is, that our life is safe with him. The streams of this living water flow into the soul by the influences of the Holy Spirit, through faith. Christ lives in the believer by his Spirit, and the believer lives to him in all he does. At the second coming of Christ, there will be a general assembling of all the redeemed; and those whose life is now hid with Christ, shall then appear with him in his glory. Do we look for such happiness, and should we not set our affections upon that world, and live above this?

As Jesus said, No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money (Luke 16:13).  I always liked the good KJV word “mammon” better because it isn’t just about money.  It’s about the status and the prestige and the admiration of the world as much as greed.  Greedy people are just greedy, seeking a false security in their doubloons or the digits in the bank account.  A lot of people who server Mammon aren’t so interested in being rich as they are in looking good to the neighbors, having the right opinions and being accepted into the right cliques, circles, and circuses.  That’s understandable for those who do not know Christ, but for those of us who do, we ought to be as zealous and as engrossed in the pursuit of heavenly things as we used to be in the pursuit of earthly satisfactions. 

Now, clearly Paul does not suggest that we should never think about our situation, our duties, and our responsibilities here on earth.  We have to take care of business.  But these earthly endeavors are not our goal in life.  Paul believed that we are responsible for and in control of what we think.  We can choose that on which we set our minds.  We ought to keep on thinking about those things in heaven we are striving toward, because it does very much matter what we think, and we orient our lives around what we think. 

There is a saying about being too heavenly-minded to be any earthly good.  I don’t believe that.  Certainly there are those who call themselves Christians who have been deluded into a mentality of entitlement.  God ought to take care of them.  It doesn’t matter what they do.  God will do what He wants.  The material world and the body do not matter, and so on.  If that were the case, all Christians would die upon baptism, the gospel would be preached by angels, and the planet would be left to the coyotes and the cockroaches.   

The reality is that social reforms, such as the end of slavery in the western world, often came about through heavenly-minded Christians, like Wilberforce, who had a different perspective on values and righteousness.  Being heavenly-minded moves us to act on the earthly plane in accordance with the mercy, love, and grace of our Father.