All We Have

In his wonderfully funny and insightful work Utopia, Sir Thomas Moore writes, "The Utopians wonder that there is any man who delights in the faint gleam of a little gem when he can look at some star or even the sun itself. They marvel that there is any man so foolish as to think himself the nobler because of the fine texture of his woolen clothing. No matter how fine the thread, a sheep once wore it, and the sheep was still a sheep for all its wearing it."

There is a reason, I think, that chasing wealth is considered a vanity - the vanity is in thinking we can own anything at all. Our stewardship of our possessions is limited to the length of our lives, or less, if we are robbed, or our possessions become damaged. God creates everything. Even the works of our hands are only vainly our creations - tonight, as I looked up at the pink left on a jet contrail by the setting sun, I realized that the beauty was entirely God's. A company may have built the jet, but the physics that allow the jet to fly, the physics that necessitate the expulsion of a contrail, the atmospheric particles that colour the atmosphere when the sun travels through it at the sunset's angle - all of that comes from God. The materials that allow us to fashion new things come from God, and so do the principles of chemistry and physics that permit the processes we manufacture with.

Consider the lilies, Jesus asks us. Was even Solomon arrayed like them? And as he tells us, tomorrow the fields of lilies are cut down. No, our fine woolen clothes do not make us better people. They make us people dressed in sheep costumes. Perhaps that is what I shall wear for Halloween! :-)

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on Earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matthew 6:19-21)