Quarter of the Year Gone

I’m not someone who easily controls their emotions. One way I deal with feeling down is by sleeping. Last night, I went to bed at ten.

I still have many worries about the future and the road ahead. Every morning, I hand these worries over in prayer. But by the end of the day, it seems like they’ve returned and filled me up again. What I need to learn is to pray at night too, so I don’t carry them into the next day. 😄

This morning, my wife shared with me her devotional insights (our spiritual state hasn’t been great lately): Saul and David were both humble men, yet God chose them. After being chosen, their attitude and response to God were completely different. One moved away from God, the other drew near. My wife then said that now, it seems like we lack nothing and have what we desired in recent years. Yet, we are far from God. Moving forward, we need to make the right choices.

I jokingly responded, “Yes, yes,” but I truly agree. I must admit that past, present, and future, everything I have is given by God, including my life. After my desires and expectations were fulfilled, my heart arrogantly thought I earned these things and could always have and control them. My eyes were truly blinded; I was truly foolish and short-sighted. Just like the “younger son” in the Bible’s Gospel of Luke. While his father was still alive, the younger son arrogantly asked for his inheritance. And here I am, facing the living Almighty God, claiming these things as mine. The younger son foolishly took his inheritance and left the father, and I am that foolish son.

I often have this realization: Christians seem to need a kind of “split personality.”

On one hand, there’s the very “real” world that our eyes see, our hands touch, and our tongues taste; more realistically, if you have money and status, you can live well, eat well, and hold your head high. This is so real and so tangible, so how can Christians resist it?

On the other hand, “we bring nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.” Nobody disputes this. Ecclesiastes 5:15 says, “Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb, and as everyone comes, so they depart. They take nothing from their toil that they can carry in their hands.” People have souls. We’re not just living for the here and now. The Bible tells us the way to eternal life: to trust in Jesus. Following Jesus or following the world is a choice between the two.

The split I feel is having a constant voice remind me every day, with every thought and every step, that you have a soul, you don’t belong to this world, you’re leaving, you’re going home.

Job 1:21 says, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised!”