When Our Lease Is Done

By Peter Lundell

I recently moved my mother to a new, downsized apartment. At times the process involved careful sorting and packing; other times demanded chucking things in boxes or in the trash. At the end of the move, the walls were bare and wounded with nail holes and plastic drywall anchors. The carpet lay lined and pocked with impressions of once-arranged furniture. And the windows stood stark and vacant against the sunlight. The furniture and decorations that once made it home were gone, leaving only an empty shell.

Throughout our lives we may go through some phases with great care and others with wild abandon. And at each phase of life, we will leave the previous one behind—a place that was once home but is now gone, like an empty apartment.

At death we may leave behind money and furniture, but the life we lived—the space we took up, the “us” that people knew—will be gone, empty as a moved-out-house.

No matter how sentimental or wounded we may be about the past, we must leave it as we enter a new phase of life. A wise person will cling to nothing, and live according to what’s ahead. In a way we all know this and my talking about it is cliché. But humans have an innate tendency to cling. And not clinging takes unending attention.

Like a rented apartment, our lives may seem like our own, but ultimately they are not. We live and breathe in the hands of God, who created us. When our life’s lease is up, all we leave behind will be emptied of us. Jesus made it fairly clear that the more we let go of here, the more we can expect to receive in the place God has prepared.

PRAYER: Father, help me to never cling to the things I think are valuable in this life. I look forward and thank You for preparing a place for me in my heavenly upgrade.

“I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also,” John 14:2b-3 KJV.

Today’s devotion is by Peter Lundell, a rising new voice on connecting with God, with new perspectives on what most people overlook. He is a pastor, Bible college teacher, and conference speaker. Visit him at www.PeterLundell.com for his inspirational “Connections” and free downloads of articles, parables, short stories, and book chapters.