"It matters a great deal who is going to win, but not at all who won"
Possessions
For this world in its present form is passing away 1 Corinthians 7:31How do we live our lives in the light of eternity? We believe that the present age will pass away and we will go to a new heaven and a new earth with Christ. But knowing how to live in the here and now is not easy. Paul, writing to the Corinthians says “the time is short”.
In Verse 30 he develops his argument about how that thought should affect how we live. He writes: “those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them”.
I sometimes think it would be easier if we could confine our worship of God to one hour on Sunday but we know it is not like that! We are to worship God all the time in all we do. And, Paul says, that includes shopping!
We live in the real world and we have to shop – choosing the cheapest option every time isn’t the answer either. Paul’s words are a challenge, treating our possessions as if they were not ours to keep. It can be a great blessing to buy something for someone else, who might not be able to afford it. It can be a blessing (as well as a challenge) to lend a prized possession to someone. But if we find that a challenge, does that mean we value our possession more than the person?
A minister of a church I used to attend liked to say: “When someone dies, people ask: how much money did he leave? He left it all!”
For some of us success in sport has brought us a rich reward. Nothing wrong with that. We work hard for it. But with it comes a responsibility to use our possessions and to treat them as if they were not ours to keep.
That is not easy but it is part of what following Jesus means.