"Where your treasure is..."

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:1...9-21)

What is your treasure? It could be something as simple as marbles.

Thought for the day

I've learned, over the years, that people often mistake audacity for talent and presumptuousness for divine calling.

The ocean of God's love

"I hold all sorts of heresies, and feel myself to have got out into a limitless ocean of the love of God that overflows all things. My theology is complete, if you but grant me an omnipotent and just Creator I need nothing more. All the tempests in the various religious teapots around me do seem so far off, so young, so green, so petty! I know I was there once, it must have been ages ago, and it seems impossible. 'God is love,' comprises my whole system of ethics. And, as thou says, it seems to take in all. There is certainly a very grave defect in any doctrine that universally makes its holders narrow and uncharitable, and this is always the case with strict so-called orthodoxy. Whereas, as soon as Christian love comes in, the bounds widen infinitely. I find that every soul that has traveled on this highway of holiness for any length of time, has invariably cut loose from its old moorings. I bring out my heresies to such, expecting reproof, when lo! I find sympathy. We are 'out on the ocean sailing,' that is certain. And if it is the ocean of God's love, as I believe, it is grand."

Hannah Whitall Smith (from a letter to Mrs. Anna Shipley), Aug. 8, 1876

Missionaries of Hate

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:36-40)

Here's what happens when Christians get their priorities mixed up.

(Courtesy of The Naked Pastor: http://www.nakedpastor.com)

Last Days?

Here a thought I've been toying with lately: What if we are "Early Christians"? What I mean is this: What if, relatively speaking, we are still in the early stages of the expansion of the Kingdom of God throughout the earth? What if 12,000 years from now, a world in which the Kingdom of God is fully manifest on earth looks back on us in the year 2010 as having been still at the relative beginning of the establishment and spread of God's Kingdom on earth?

I wonder if that's what Martin Luther King had in mind when he said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." Beginnings are, by nature, incomplete but filled with potential. Our current experience of God's will being done here on earth as it is in heaven could certainly be described as "incomplete". But there is great potential.

We've gotten so used to thinking in the short-term, and so many Christians assume that they are living in the "Last Days" (as have Christians throughout the last 2,000 years: imagine living in the 14th century when the Black Plague killed half the population of Europe--you might be justified in thinking that the "Last Days" had come!). I have a great book entitled "The Day and The Hour" which lists various "Last Days" predictions made throughout the past two millenia--all of them wrong.

Biblically speaking, the "Last Days" have already come and gone. Take a look at Acts 2:16-17; Hebrews 1:1-2 (as well as 9:26 & 8:13); 1 Corinthians 10:11 and James 5:1-9 (among others). The writers of the New Testament understood themselves to be living in the "Last Days" of the Jewish Temple system and in the beginning of a whole new epoch during which God would dwell in the hearts of people.

So what if we started thinking in terms of the 21st century still being the "First Days" with a long arc ahead of us and much Kingdom work to be done?