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A Better Possession
By Duane | November 11, 2009
Whenever I update the rss feed, links or blogroll in the right sidebar, I don’t usually point it out. It’s just one of those areas on the page that I hope people find useful, but at the end of the day probably serves my own purposes more than anyone else.
But today I just wanted to draw your attention to a new addition on the blogroll. It’s called A Better Possession and is administered by one of the Ministers at my church, Craig Hamilton, whose conversation on a range of theological topics I value.
Actually It was Craig who gave one of the best and simplest analogies I have heard addressing our condition of death; that apart from Jesus we do not have life - not real life anyway. Although you may seem alive, according to Jesus you’re not, you’re actually dead. To paraphrase Craig:
Sometimes I buy my wife flowers. They look very nice, they’re colourful and look as though they’re alive. But when I take them home and give them to her, inevitably they begin to wilt and shrivel until finally, they die [i.e. have the appearance of being dead]. Was it my fault they died? Is it the water I put them in? Was it the environment or transportation? Was it the packaging? While each of these things may have contributed to the prolonged appearance of life, none of these things killed the flowers. The truth is the flowers were already dead when I bought them. When you buy cut flowers, you’re buying dead flowers. They may look as though they’re alive, but they’re actually dead. It just takes a week or so for you to realise that what you bought was dead flowers. And the reason they’re dead is because they have been cut off from the source of life. And in the same way, God says that if you have cut yourself off from him. If you have rebelled against Him, ignored Him, treated Him as irrelevant, then you have cut yourself off from the source of life. So even though you appear alive, in due time you will begin to shrivel and wilt, and then you too will die. [i.e. You'll be a corpse. Having been cut off from the source of life and died long ago, like the flower you will inevitably take on an appearance consistent with dead things].
Source - Real Jesus:Full Life
While I did not have a particular niche in mind when beginning my blog, I found myself wanting to write more about external challenges to Christianity (especially the evolutionary worldview) rather than discussing the practical aspects. Craig on the other hand, had a clear vision for his blog from the outset. I cannot possibly capture his vision here in a few paragraphs, so I encourage you to read his opening blog. Here is an excerpt:
The phrase “A Better Possession” comes from Hebrews 10:34 where the writer urges his hearers to persevere in the faith and not to shrink back. And his strategy at this point is to remind them of their earlier behaviour and to push them to keep acting like that. And their earlier behaviour has always been striking to me.
32Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. 33Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. 34You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.
Particularly the phrase “joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property”. That always jumped right out off the page. And the reason they could act like that was equally stunning. They could joyfully accept the plundering of their property because they knew they had better and lasting possessions. Well that’s how the NIV puts it anyway. The ESV captures it a bit more closely when it says:
you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.
…
Jesus himself is a possession better than every and any possession we might have or lose in this life.
…
The passage isn’t really a picture of where me and my heart are at. It’s more a a picture of a place I’d desperately like to live someday. Where Jesus is such a superior treasure to me that I could joyfully accept ridicule and insult and persecution and plundering because Jesus is so much better.
It’s not where I’m at but it’s where I’d like to be.
And that’s what this blog is really about.
Topics: Blog, Christianity, Theology |
November 11th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I hear you brother. Im right there with you.