Who has succeeded?  What is best?

One of the great problems of fighting my pain and the medications designed to win that fight is that I go through spells of being totally out of it.  Well, maybe not totally, but enough so that I have no physical or mental ambition and so just lay around and vegieate.Did I spell that right? My content management system has a spell check, but for some reason the server will not deliver the correct headers for the module that runs the spell check so it does not work.  Am too lazy to figure it out.

Anyway, one of the short-falls I encounter is that my devotional readings become sporadic.  I enjoy just reading through the Bible for my devotions. In general, I start at Genesis and just go through Revelation. I avoid monotomy by changing versions.

This year I am reading the NIV. However, I am bouncing back and forth between the OT starting at Genesis, the NT, and the widsom books starting with Psalms. I usually almost make it through the Good Book twice a year and I suspect this year will be right on that target.  Today I have been reading Hebrews and was struck by teh beginning of 11:38.  In the NIV it reads:

         "the world was not worthy of them"

Chapter 11 is the Faith Hall of Fame where the author reviews the men of faith and the events that display such faith.  The real point of the chapter is that all of these famous Old Testament saints displayed great faith in anticipation of the coming of Messiah, someday in the future after their time. At verse 32 the author lists without specific comment a number of saints and then talks about "the prophets,' "women," and "others."  There is a short commentary on the persecution and trials these nameless believers endured. Again, the point is that they undertook what we would call a life in Christ by faith before anyone knew who Messiah was.  This is all pre-New Testament stuff.  And then, comes the comment of verse 38. 

I just never caught phrase before.  Virtually all of the major translations read essentially the same.  The NLT reads "They were too good for this world" and the Message reads "the world didn’t deserve them!"

That is a powerful testimony.  Is your testimony that good? I just cannot think of mine as being worthy of such a comment.

Yet, as I think about the Bible and the difference between believers and unbelievers, there is a sense in which all of us are too good for the world. By definition, Christians are citizens of Heaven. How much better that will be. What a wonderful inheritance awaits us.  Like the Old Testament saints, we, too, await and most likely will die before we receive the completion of God's promise to use.

This sits with the idea behind some of my recent posts on the spiritual attacks the church is currently enduring.  Our task is to not become ashamed of being a Christian. We must keep our heads high no matter what the world may say and keep our eyes focused upoon Christ -- as Paul writes in Colossians 3, focus on the things above.  Home is not here on this planet. Home is the heavenly Jerusalem. Most of us, perhaps all of us, will die before we get there.

Yet, in the eyes of God, we are better than the world.  God does not love the world any less, but as sons and daughters of God, we are saints, just like those of Hebrews 11.  The world is not worthy of us either.

What a wonderful thought for this Easter weekend.

May God richly bless you and watch over you.

Jim A