Beware! - March 31, 2011

Good Thursday morning! We are getting some fine rain, but the weather folks say it will be followed by a day of wind. Sorry, our taste of weather perfection will have to wait for Heaven it seems. I didn't see you all at the land auction meeting yesterday, I see that you have decided to sit on your millions for a while longer. Ah well, I went to do research for my writing. I don't want you to think that I have any millions to sit on, or spend on land for that matter. Today, I wonder what would happen if land suddenly became worthless out here. What if all those thousands and millions spent on big tracts of land just didn't matter any more? That day might even be today. A farmer or rancher might have an immediate need for land to perform their trade. Most of us have no need for hundreds of acres of cropland or thousands of acres of pasture. We might be tempted to stockpile land like a miser stockpiles his loot. Sitting on a bunch of anything and declaring yourself secure sounds a lot like that fellow with the new barns that Jesus spoke of in the Bible. It is easy to go to a land auction and wish for enough money to buy up some big parcel. You might even come up with a reason to have that land. But looking at the imminent return of Christ, do we really need all that we think we need or want? Here in America and in most of the western countries, most everything is for sale. But not everything that is for sale is good for us to have. Almost nothing that can be bought with money will go with us into Heaven. We do need many things, but we also want many more. The two men who owned all the land that will be coming up for auction in a couple of weeks lived as farmers, but even as farmers the land is doing them no good now. The men were brothers and within a couple of months both of them died. Thousands of acres of land sits here for sale; they are somewhere else. They won't even get to spend the money that will be raised from the sale. Why go into this? Any of us can go to a land auction and feel the lure of becoming one of those wealthy, big land owners. If we just had this much land, we would be set and secure. We could raise a big garden and have plenty of food. Never mind the work that a 400-acre garden would take, we just feel that temptation from the great tempter. Would the purchase of just one of the parcels cure us of that temptation? I suspect not, because yesterday I saw folks there who already own more land than they can use. Even more of those types will be at the auction. The big land owners want more land, the wealthy want more wealth, and the collector wants to add to his collection. Do we see a pattern here? I didn't even get to the part where the person who earns more than enough in his job still wants big raises each year and fights for that next promotion. There is something broken in this world's system; something that means us harm and desperately wants to keep us caught up in looking away from the Good News of Jesus Christ. We must be watchful for that desire toward accumulation and acquisition that can drive us to a place we don't want to go. I suppose the wind will soon blow all of these clouds away and we will see the sun shining. I'm trying to make the best of the day. I pray that the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus will make your day shine too! Bucky