You're Just Passing Through

Last night we had a going away party for some friends of ours who are moving up to Boston. There was a ton of good food. We had a lot of laughs and bunches of great conversation. And now we have a really good reason to visit that wonderful city.

The whole evening was a solid reminder of the reality that life is a very transient thing. For an increasing number of us here in America it is becoming normal to move around quite a bit. Gorgeous and I have been married a little over 8 years and we are on our fifth home and third state.

Yet some folks live in the same place their entire lives. Do you suppose folks who do ever lose site of how short life is? I know it would be tempting for me to believe that this life was a more permanent thing if I stayed in one place for a long time.

But the reality life is fleeting. The Bible says

Your life is like the morning fog--it's here a little while, then it's gone.

Not one of us knows how long we have here. I don’t see anywhere that it’s written we are promised to be on this world tomorrow. Keeping that in mind can help us make the most of today.

The other life lesson that was reinforced by our friends leaving was that we shouldn’t hold our possessions too dearly. They had to lighten the load considerably to make their move due to the tremendous disparity in housing costs between Savannah and Boston. They de-ballasted by giving away a ton of stuff. The chair I’m sitting in while I type this was one of their gifts.

We have the capacity to put way too much importance on our stuff. Voice in the Wilderness says you can learn a lot about folks and their stuff just by looking in the church parking lot. When you move around you have an incentive to lighten the load that isn’t there when you stay put for a long time.

Right before He told a story to illustrate how short life is Jesus pointed out that

Real life is not measured by how much we own.

It goes back to what I said about life a while back. The meat (the real substance) of life is the sum of our relationships. Everything else is just flavoring.

Enjoy!

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Tags: Life, Life is Short, Stuff, CREEations, Chris Cree