Daily Devotionals

Devotional: November 2nd

A BETTER AND AN ENDURING SUBSTANCE

Knowing that ye yourselves have a better possession and an abiding one, - Hebrews 10:34

The writer has just spoken in the previous clause about " taking joyfully the spoiling of your goods" and for " possession" he employs a word closely related to that, which is translated "goods." So that he is pointing back, and suggesting that the wealth that had been taken was trivial and poor in comparison with the wealth which the believing Hebrews retained. They had lost farthings; they had kept pounds.

That possession is better, just because it is within and not without. The wealth that a man has is only apparently his possession. There is many a man in Manchester about whom we say, "He has mills or capital amounting to so many thousands, or millions," when it would be a great deal truer to say, "The mills and the capital and the millions have him." He is not their owner; he is their slave. But even when outward possessions do not become tyrants, it is still true that whatever lies outside of us is less precious than what we have within. Love is more than money; peace is more than plenty. It is better to have a quiet heart than a full cupboard. It is better to have a clear record of conscience than a banknote with a heavy balance on the credit side. What we have, or what has us, is small in comparison with what we are. The wealth within is the true wealth; and there is nothing that will satisfy a man except having himself re-made after the image of Jesus Christ, and so being " lord of himself if not of lands." The difference between these two kinds of possession is the difference between having to go a weary way to a well with a pitcher, and bringing back a scanty and not very pure or cool supply, and having a fountain in your courtyard. " A good man shall be satisfied from himself," says the Book of Proverbs; and that is better than being a pauper dependent on the contingent satisfactions that come from anything outside of us.

"A better and an enduring possession " - or, perhaps, we should rather say, better because enduring. Nothing can deprive me of myself but myself. Only its own hands can break the sweet bonds that knit a believing soul to Jesus Christ. The world may blow its fiercest hurricanes of losses, and sorrows may come storming upon us, but they will only blow the dead leaves off the tree, while the living ones remain, and the strong bole and sturdy branches are unharmed. The branches may toss; the stem and the roots are unmoved. So it is better to have wealth which the world cannot give and cannot take away than to be enriched with all the fast-fading sweets that it offers.

This wealth is better because it is altogether unaffected by and persistent through that change which takes away everything besides. As the grim psalm has it, "his glory shall not descend after him," As the grim proverb has it, "Shrouds have no pockets." The corpse laid out upon a board to be buried has the hands that clutched straightened out, open and empty for evermore. But we take ourselves with us when we go - what we have made of ourselves, and what Christ in us has made of us. " Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for . . . their works do follow them," and their wealth goes with them.

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