We live in a time where there is an exaggerated emphasis on things. What you own gives substance to who you are. If you live in a grand house, in a grand neighbourhood, driving a grand car, then you are a grand person. But anybody that knows someone driving a grand car will tell you that it is not necessarily true. Grand things don’t equal grand people.
I’ve heard a quote that says: the world teaches we should love things and use people, while God teaches us to use things and love people. That is so true! We have the wrong perspective on both things as well as people. We tend to love the neighbourhood instead of the neighbour. We tend to love the car more than the person who puts petrol in the car. And the question is: what did Jesus die for? For things or for people?
I think a lot of what we struggle with is that we don’t have the right perspective. In the grand scheme of things, when you look at eternity, these things will be gone. The latest appliances or gadgets will be old technology. I remember when a Nokia 5110 was THE phone. Now it’s a brick! You wouldn’t want to be caught dead with it! It was a good phone, but if you were emotionally invested in it you would have given your respect and love to an object that is now out of date. If you took that same respect and love and gave it to your son for instance, today that love and respect would have been given back to you. Because technology fades away, but people don’t. Relationships don’t fade away when you nourish them. They grow stronger and better.
The same can be said of televisions. I remember when the first colour television made its appearance. I was a small boy and I thought, this is it, you don’t get better than this! Today it’s got to be a flat screen. That 51 cm Sony televisions were top of the range. But if you have one today, you are considered poor because it is so old.
What about a car? I remember when I was a boy, my father drove a Ford Escort. I remember thinking, this is the best car! Then he got a Toyota Cressida. For us that was a grand car, better than the other railway workers had. But if you would give that car to me today I would say, ‘You know what, keep it. It doesn’t have power steering or aircon. I don’t even want it for free. It is useless in terms of technology today.
Things just don’t have a long shelf life. But if you invest time, energy and money in people, you get back dividends. Why? Because a relationship gives back what you put into it. It is people that enrich your life – not things. Take the currency of love and give it to people. Jesus didn’t die on a cross for things, He died on a cross for people. Let us make a decision today to value people more than things.
(Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/mWTOR3Rx8l8)
