shall we get high on truth?

viernes, diciembre 29, 2006

The Cycle of Stuff

Everyone seemed cheerful as presents were being unwrapped Christmas day. My parents had stayed up late the night before yet they were all smiles. My sister Nicole was running around seeing what everybody got and making up for all the excitement that we were lacking. My other sister Natalie was making sure everyone knew how thankful she was. Jerry Certain and I were taking turns shooting balls of crinkled wrapping paper into the big trash bin in the corner of the room. Uncle JD was picking on everybody like always. Lacy was already trying on her new clothes and Grandfather was making everybody laugh… but he always does that. My GF rocks!

Christmas is all about stuff. Especially this Christmas. The week before Christmas, we had a family from Mexico City hang out with us for a week. It was their Christmas vacation and little did we know that their idea of vacation in the USA is shopping, shopping, and more shopping. This family is pretty wealthy. Wealthy to Americans and extremely wealthy to Mexicans. And when they saw the Christmas sales at the mall they went berserk and got tons of stuff. Then they bought another huge suitcase so they could buy more stuff.

I love that family and I love spending time with their two little boys. The boys are surprisingly not too spoiled… yet. But mentally I was hoping that they would forget some stuff and leave it behind like their Nintendo Wii that they got to accompany the X-Box 360 they have at home.

So we were all in the “gimme stuff” attitude once Christmas day came up and I admittedly have already spent all my Christmas money. Worldly stuff. Temporary stuff. Stuff that erodes and fades away with time. Why is this stuff disease so easily contagious?

I got a computer game for Christmas (Star Wars: Battlefront 2, oh yeah!). The other day I spent all day and all night playing it. Finally, at 2 in the morning I stepped back and said, “Shoot! A whole day of my life… gone… wasted.” And to what does it amount? Faster reflexes and bigger imagination?

As I sit here, I think about the poor children all over the world of whose parents abuse them and who have no understanding of what life is all about. It must be so much easier to store up treasures in heaven when you have no treasures on earth as a distraction. Stuff on earth was not given to me by God so that I could walk away with it and solely please myself. Stuff is given to us so that we can produce and give back. We were made to work with the gifts that were given to us from God so that we can return glory.

And what do heavenly treasures amount to? What use will it be to have heavenly stuff in comparison to earthly stuff?

When we finally get to the Judgment seat of Christ, we will see the throne of God. It’ll probably be so bright we won’t be able to look that direction for long. But we can look just long enough to see that Jesus is standing on the right side of the throne. Jesus. God’s ultimate gift to us. There He stands with the marks still visible in His hands and His feet. Eternal reminders that He is the ultimate gift. Then Jesus will come forth and hand us our heavenly stuff. Our crowns. Each crown will probably be unique with different stones reflecting the brilliant glory of God sitting on His throne to the degree of how well we used His gifts on earth.

Being redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and resurrected in our glorified bodies, we naturally know what to do with the crowns that have been placed on our heads. With incredible joy we humbly remove them from our heads and lay them down at the Father’s feet. He gave, we return. The cycle of stuff.

Then as we are kneeling there before the throne and gazing at all the colorful crowns beautifully reflecting the glory of God, it will hit us. Tears will stream down our cheeks. We wonder what God thinks of our crowns—our life on earth. We wonder how much more brilliant our crowns could have been. We say to ourselves, “My life on earth… gone… wasted. Dang… I wish I had so much more to give.”

3 Comments:

Blogger kiwi said...

yeah, it's sad how we focus so much time and energy on material things instead of "storing up treasures in heaven." good post!

29/12/06 10:56 p.m.

 
Anonymous Anónimo said...

gave me goosebumps.
beautiful entry...

31/12/06 4:29 p.m.

 
Blogger Jonathan Haynie said...

Wow. Nice entry. Thanks for the comment.

1/1/07 12:13 a.m.

 

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