I’ll Fly Away, but My Possessions Won’t
When I lead singing, I try to avoid burying my head in the song book. As I lead, I attempt to look around the room and sing most of the words from memory, only glancing down as I need to.
It’s a good idea, until you blank on the words, or realize too late that you missed something.
Recently, I was leading the great old hymn “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks.” Thankfully, I don’t think anyone caught what I actually said, because it was close enough to the actual lyric that it probably sounded right.
What the song really says is, “On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wishful eye / To Canaan’s fair and happy land where my possessions lie.”
What I ended that opening verse with were these words: “To Canaan’s fair and happy land where my possessions fly.”
Um…nope.
I love songs like “I’ll Fly Away” and others that remind us that we are going to heaven. I am regularly built up by the grand thought that there is something beyond this life that is far greater and perfectly glorious. I’m doing all I can to go to that wonderful “Home of the Soul” so I can be with my Father forever.
But while I may fly away, my possessions will not.
What I have in this life will still be here when I have left the land of the dying to enter the land of the living. All the things I have worked for will be left to someone else.
And, when the world ends, all that stuff will be burned up and destroyed.
Too many of us live as if our possessions are going to “fly away” just as we will when this life is over. We spend copious amounts of energy and effort building up all the niceties of life and worry and fret over taking care of those things.
But one day, none of that is going to matter. All that is going to matter is the answer to this question: “Where will my soul fly when this life is over?”
Only through Jesus can you have the best and most reassuring answer to that powerful question.
——
To Receive Every Post via Email for Free, Click Here
Photo background credit: Jesus Solana on Creative Commons
