As a pilgrim, it becomes easier to hold earthly things very lightly.
I heard this definition of a pilgrim recently -
"An intense narrowing of all our interests on earth, and an immense broadening of all our interests in God."
"The world's way to responding to intimations of decay is to engage equally in idiot hopes and idiot despair. On the one hand, some new policy or discovery is confidently expected to put everything to rights- a new fuel, a new drug, detente, world government. On the other hand, some disaster is as confidently expected to prove our undoing- capitalism will break down, fuel will run out, plutonium will lay us low, atomic waste will kill us off. Overpopulation will suffocate us or alternatively a declining birth rate will put us more at the mercy of our enemies. In Christian terms, such hopes and fears are equally beside the point, for as Christians we know that here we have no continuing city, that crowns roll in the dust and every earthly kingdom must sometimes flounder whereas we acknowledge a king men did not crown and cannot dethrone, as we are citizens of a city of God they did not build and cannot destroy. Thus the apostle wrote to the Christians in Rome, living in a society as depraved and as dissolute as ours, their games like our television specialized in spectacles of violence and eroticism. Paul exhorted them to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in God's work, to concern themselves with the things that are unseen. For the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal. It was in the breakdown of Rome that Christendom was born. Now in the breakdown of Christendom, there are the same requirements and the same possibilities to eschew the fantasy of a disintegrating world and to seek the reality of what is not seen and eternal- the reality of Christ." -- Malcolm MuggeridgeThere is a gospel song titled "I can't feel at home in this world any more" - the first verse goes like this...
Pilgrims who pass through territory en route to their permanent home do not drive in their stakes too deeply. They know they are leaving in the morning.This world is not my home I'm just passing through
my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
the angels beckon me from Heaven's open door
and I can't feel at home in this world anymore
Unfortunately, instead of pilgrims with a clear vision of our final destiny, we are being labelled earth-bound tourists searching for the latest spiritual high.
Pastor Allen Yuan in China was 82 years old and still serving - he did not retire because he could not find any reference to retirement in the Bible - this is his quick story --
Chinese policy changed. Because of prison overcrowding, the government decided to release Christian leaders who had spent two decades in jail. Allen was paroled and told he must not preach. But he continued to spread the gospel from his own home. He taped sermons and distributed them. He was still working for Christ in his late eighties. "As we live each day, we want to work for Him [Jesus] until He returns, as we know He is coming soon. If He comes today, I am fully prepared, as everybody must give an account."
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