Before you - Roots

 

Our decisions are required either for our salvation or our ruin. We live in yesterday's tomorrow, in the results of our choices. The choices we make are not for today, our whole lives lie in the wake of every decision. Some our our decisions are simply devastating with consequences that fall not just on ourselves. But forgiveness and healing also wait on the other side of decisions. None will succeed in making only good choices, but even those who have fallen the furthest can choose well and find peace.

           We reap what we sow, good or bad; and sometimes others will reap from what we've sown and we will reap from what other's have sown, good or bad.

 

Some of the weeds we plant can be uprooted, but often there will be consequences, and these God may well use for disciplining and humbling. Sometimes we simply have to endure the consequences of other's awful choices. Wherever we find ourselves, there is no better way to spend the time than by sowing good seed, even in tears.

           Investing is about getting a good return, but what we mostly think is "It's me who should get the return." What if someone else reaps the goodness that you've planted, would you be upset that the blessing didn't return to you?

 

But according to Jesus we don't end up footing the bill, we receive back a hundred times what we gave up for his sake, here and hereafter.

Some say "But I can't see it, how do I know it's real? Why should I risk?"

            Exactly what do we risk when we sow into eternity? What do we have now that we could keep? Nothing, a few billion graves prove that. We cannot keep what we see here. It's the plain, obvious truth that all materialism has to block its eyes and ears to. Our hands will lose their grasp on this world, and all that is worked for will go to another (who in turn will be unable to keep it). It's our decision to make, we can choose to sow it all where we will lose it all. Isn't that guaranteed futility?

 

Even at the last hour it is never to late to find a life of meaning, and even if it's your last seed to give, like the confession and declaration made by the dying thief on the cross, to Jesus it is enough.*  What Jesus asks for is not lots, but all. All may be little, but that doesn't make it less than all, it is a full measure and it is enough.

 

*Matt19.29