Remember a time when jealousy or envy reared its ugly head and you wished you had something that someone else owned? Maybe it was a house, a car, a bank account, or even that luscious green lawn. All humans have had that feeling before and some of us more often than others. After the emotion hit you, hopefully you considered all the good gifts you did have in your life and gave thanks for them. Let’s pray that you are still not hanging onto those feelings. Unfortunately, we do live in a world that seems to fuel those desires and push us toward wanting more and more.
But let’s level the field here. Did you ever hear of someone who died and was able to take any of those things into the afterlife? The reality is that nothing we have in this life truly belongs to us. We come into this world with nothing and as time goes by more gifts are entrusted to us but we never truly own them. So whom do they belong to anyway?
Of course, you know the answer. All that we have has been entrusted to us by God; to be cherished, cultivated, and then given back to him for his glory. God doesn’t need any of these things, and we only need them short-term. All that we need long-term is God. If he is all we need in the end, I bet our lives would be more fruitful and happier if we focused on that now instead of later.
—Tracy Earl Welliver, MTS