Temporary Residents

By: Martin Luther

So if you call God your Father, live your time as temporary residents on earth in fear.  He is the God who judges all people by what they have done, and he doesn’t play favorites.  1 Peter 1:17

God wants us serve our neighbor while we live here on earth.  If a Christian is a sincere believer, he has all of God’s treasures and is God’s child.  The rest of his life on earth is merely a pilgrimage.  God allows him to live in this body and walk on this earth so that he can help other people and bring them to heaven.  Therefore, we must use all things on earth in no other way than as a guest who travels across the country and comes to an inn.  He spends the night there and takes only food and lodging from the innkeeper.  He doesn’t claim that the innkeeper’s property now belongs to him.  

This is how we must deal with material possessions, as if they did not belong to us.  We should enjoy only as much as is necessary for us to maintain the body and use the rest to help our neighbors.  Similarly, the Christian life is like being an overnight guest.  For “we don’t have a permanent city here on earth” (Hebrews 13:14), but we must go to our Father in heaven.

-from Luthers Works v 30, page 35

 

It is a insightful and challenging picture of our possessions.  We are to have only what we need, not more.  That goes contrary to the honest assessment of most of our lives.  The idea is that what we have left over from what we need is what we are to bless our neighbor with.  Isn’t that the real meaning of the word blessings?  That which we can give away to serve our neighbor, those things that by which we bless others.  

Imagine if we lived this way, first how much we would bless, and how much less we would HAVE to have.  Serving our neighbors is no less than releasing what God has given us in excess, certainly possessions are part of this but put that in the context of His love shown through Jesus Christ.  We ALWAYS have excess of love.  Love with action and gift is a powerful sign of God’s work in this world. 

- Pastor Shawn

Vanity to Venom

A San Diego man allegedly stabbed a barber who gave him an unacceptable haircut. The man attacked the shop owner as he was closing down and slashed him twice in the face. The motive was that the man was unhappy with a previous haircut, according to authorities. (Source: 10News.com)

 

/ a man’s vanity leads him to hurt his neighbor because of the temporary look the perpetrator received from a haircut.  What has been damaged in this man’s ability to control his anger?  What boundaries do not exist when he can hurt someone for a haircut that isn’t even permanent?  His actions are the opposite of love your neighbor.

Coveting Customers Kill Courtesy Clerk

From CNN:

LONG ISLAND, New York (CNN) – The death of a temporary Wal-Mart worker trampled by customers amid frantic Black Friday shopping could have been avoided, the union that represents retail workers said Saturday.

 

Customers rushing to get into a Valley Stream, New York, Wal-Mart damaged doors and trampled a worker.

Jdimytai Damour, 34, was crushed as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m. Friday, police said.

***

When your push to get what you want before others takes the life of someone who is there to help you it is time to revise your priorities.  Coveting Kills.  Isn’t coveting one of the foundations of capitalism?  The desire to have what someone else has drives you to do what you must to have it.  If legitimate means seems too difficult or are frustrated then some devolve to more sinister means.  We are a sick people.

I just heard an interview on the radio with a customer who stood in line from 11:30 to 5 AM at Best Buy to get a PS3 and a TV.  After standing in line to make his purchases he decided to put the PS3 back even though he would have received $100 off.  Maybe waiting isn’t so bad?  He stood in line and had to have the internal discussion – do I really need this stuff?  On the flipside, he did leave with the TV.

There have been many times that I have delayed a purchase to have that discussion.  Many times I put it back because I didn’t perceive the value to it overcoming the hype that was created outside of myself.  Other times I remembered how much I have already and needed to give thanks for what I had.  

Slow down people, give some money away, wait or make your kids wait, you’ll be OK I guarantee it.