Bandana

I went out hiking Saturday with a friend from my bible study. It was a very nice day! (nice enough to get a little sunburn!) I stuck a very sentimental bandana in my pocket before setting out, with the intent to use it to tie my hair back.

Well, I never did, and half way through the trail I realized the bandana was no longer in my pocket. I'd dropped it somewhere.

I was standing on a tall rock, and I looked back down the trail in the direction I'd come. My friend very graciously said she wouldn't mind if we went back to look for it. I thought for a second, and then I felt God speak to my heart.

"You can't bring it with you."

I smiled. "No," I said to my friend. "My treasure's in heaven." And we went on with our hike.

You can't bring it with you. That banadan can't follow me into heaven, no matter how special it is in this earthly life. Nothing can. That's why God encourages us to always focus on things that have an eternal value, not things that will ultimately pass away - like sentimental bandanas. When I dropped that bandana, I was handed a golden opportunity to severe one more chain that was binding my heart to temporal things. Was I willing to let it go? By God's grace, yes I was.

When we moved into our apartment, I remember telling one of the people helping us "If something goes smash, just ask yourself if the Gospel is still saving souls. If the answer's "yes", then our redeemer lives - and that's just a plate."

I house sat for a professor a number of years back and during my first briefing she said "I usually leave the sliding glass door open for the cats." I asked her if she feared robbers and she said shrugged and said "it's just stuff." What a great perspective.

People can rob us, we can lose stuff or even break it - but our salvation can never be taken from us.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. " --Romans 8:35, 37-39

The Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord - that's the gospel. Once attained, nothing can take our salvation from us. Christ has seccured it eternally. Lost bandana? That's not a problem - hell was a problem, but a problem long ago taken care of.