Seek the things that are above!

This week’s readings put me in mind of the tiny house movement that is sweeping across the industrialized world.  A movement that only the wealthiest and the vainest of societies can have.  

It is the equivalent of cultural blow-back on our obsession with consumerism, our need to have more and more stuff, "our vanity of vanities."

Most of the world ekes out survival on a daily basis from refugee tents, mud shacks, one room hovels or shelter-less in the open air.  

These people have no choice, no money, no way out, no political power and yet they are people of great hope, of enormous spiritual strength and faith.

The Mennonite Church in North America is growing smaller and older while in the third world it is a youthful movement that grows stronger and larger. 

Here is another question that is rooted in the scriptures this week in our vanity - Where do miracles still happen today?

In the civilized world (yes sarcasm intended) we dismiss miracles as having been debunked by medical science – our vanity gets in the way again.  

Whereas from the Mennonite's in Africa and Asia we hear stories of modern miracles.  These are places where consumerism has not yet infected the people with the vanity of personal ownership.  

Places where Christian’s have not given away their spiritual wealth at the alter of things.

Oh to live in a tent and know the personal touch of my Lord every moment of the day!

And yet I will not give away all that I have and so it is the proverbial “eye of the needle” that my soul will need to pass through on its journey to eternity.  

How else will all of my vanity be stripped from me so that I can enter heaven open to the wonders of miracles?

How else will my soul learn to seek the things that are above anew!

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Lectionary readings: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23, Psalm 49: 1-12, Colossians 3: 1-11, Luke 12 13-21.