I stand pondering in sheer confusion and hurt as I look out my backdoor to my property line, and contemplate the current “neighborhood war” that’s in full-swing.
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times, “You can’t take it with you.” And then I also remember the old addage, “you enter the world with nothing, and you leave the world with nothing.”
As I get barraged by the escalating feuding in my backyard, I contemplate the tradeoffs of having my neighbor move their mailbox off my property versus the value of peace and the negative impact on others that stance could have regardless of how right (or wrong) I am.
My chest is pounding. The stress of who’s wrong and who’s right is screaming, churning, and burning in my emotions like a tornado crashing into a hurricane. “Calm down already!” I scream inside my head (I dare not speak up or it will escalate further). I look at the neighbor’s house and think, “You can’t take it with you. I can’t take it with me. So why make this the sword we fall on? Why make this silly mailbox the trigger of the an all-out neighborhood war?”
So that gets me thinking: what is the “it” I cannot take with me? And, what (if anything) can I take with me?
I look at the “dog-eat-dog” world around me, and am baffled. I see people plunging into materialism as if it owns them instead of them owning the meterials, “stuff”.
So often it seems like people are most obsessed with that which is the least valuable; and yet that which is truly the most valuable is is most often overlooked and ignored.
I think about people scrambling and hoarding up earthly possessions. They treasure gold, diamonds, land, fancy cars and houses yet they trample over human lives to get it. They turn their heads away from the desperate calls for help, and close their eyes to the heartbreaking pleas around them.
So where is there real value? What can I take with me?
There is value in time. “Redeeming your time because the days are evil. ‘
Combine time with the opportunities that have been set in front of us, and I would contend we each have the opportunity to take so much with us.
So, what can we take with us?
Only one option! We can only take each other with us; and, we are given a measured time in which to do it.
Lord, teach me to number my days. May I guard my heart and focus my investments on those within my sphere of influence. May I help others make it to heaven. That’s all I can with me. That’s it. That’s all.
To whom little is given little as required. To whom much is given, much is required. What are you going to do? What am I going to do?
Beautiful In Time 