Monday, October 10, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Sell the farm, buy the pearl
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
Submit again, Paul says? So many proud people will say, “When have I ever been a slave?” And, of course, almost none of us fit the conventional description. But are we free? That’s the question.
I’m caught by Kris Kristofferson and Janis Joplin. “Freedom is just another word for – nothin’ left to lose … feelin’ good was easy, Lord, when …”
I sat on the bed at Stritch Retreat Center and strummed my guitar. I had been reading Galatians and decided to sing the verses, making up little melodies through the book. Getting to chapter five, Janis threw me a melody and I grabbed it. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” I sang and kept adding that one phrase into the text, “nothin’ left to lose.”
When Jesus told the parable of the pearl, he meant this, I think. Sell EVERYTHING, buy the pearl. You got everything you need, and nothin’ left to lose. This is not despair, this is triumphant, victory and joy. Come, be at peace, do the work God calls you to and be still.
From the rising to the setting of the sun is the name of the Lord to be praised.
I generally wake up in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom, worry about whatever is worrying me, have some trouble getting back to sleep. Why is that? I’ve got nothin’ left to lose. I have sold the farm and bought the pearl, and God’s blessing is all I have. Always and forever, it is more than enough.
Over the years I’ve become less vulnerable to the dark side of my doubts. I do doubt, of course. Don’t you? Have I given God all I have, symbolically, spiritually, physically? What does that mean anyway? I reserve time and money and energy for myself, don’t I?
Well, yes.
If this transaction was up to me, this buy low, sell high idea would be beyond my reach. But it’s not up to me. God’s willingness to take my smallest move toward him and bless it – bless me – proves itself over and over. God’s words and vision strengthen me every time.
Who is like the Lord, our God, who looks upon the heavens and the earth below? He raises up the lowly from the dust; from the dunghill he lifts up the poor. Blessed be the name of the Lord forever.
My emotions lead me up and down and through pastures of plenty and wilderness of sand and drought. It’s not God that does that. Nor does God hobble my body. My body is even more fickle than my feelings, as I get older. Up and down, healthy and sick, too tentative and carelessly confident. I am sure this was true of Paul, as it is for all of us. O miserable man I am! What can rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7)
Paul knew the answer to his own question.
Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.
As this same Jesus said to his crowd of listeners,
The Son of Man is a sign to this generation.
There is something greater than Solomon here.
There is something greater than Jonah here.
Oh, yes! We are all in the same boat, Jesus’ listeners, Jesus’ disciples, Paul himself. Who will rescue us from our bodies of death? Jesus! And still, we doubt and we fail and we falter. We are twisted into two personalities all the days of our lives.
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
But! It doesn’t matter! Just as we are enslaved, so also we are free.
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Say yes to all of that. Say yes and live.
(Galatians 4, Psalm 113, Psalm 95, Luke 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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