Despite the overt honky tonk in the old country classic from Joe Diffie, “Prop Me Up Beside The Juke Box,” the tune is still catchy and I can’t help but get my white guy jiggle going and singing along.
There is something about escaping death. Even as a Christian I feel like there is always unfinished work. Death, in itself, doesn’t really scare me at all. I believe I will be raised to Heaven and be living in a much better place, with no worries, and be able to have complete rest. If I’m wrong, and Heaven doesn’t exist, then I’m eternally asleep, and I’ll still have no worries or concern for rest, because I would cease to exist at all.
What bothers me is the idea that I will leave behind unfinished work.
Dying today would mean I have 3 kids that will not have their dad. If I am fortunate enough that they come to know God, and have other respected leaders in their lives, they will still likely turn out okay, but that is my job.
Insurance can help address the financial fears associated with that. Should I leave behind a mortgage payment, car payments, or other debts, I have addressed the financial concerns with insurance so that my family would not have that looming over them. I have to work a little harder right now, in order to protect my family from that future hazard. They would still feel the loss and it wouldn’t be the same as if I was still here.
My plans also include trying to grow a small business and get it to the point that I can eventually hand it off to my children if they are interested. I am nowhere near that goal, and my wife, in spite of all her best efforts, is not a long term thinker. There would be no long term plan to grow wealth and set up a family legacy of stability and wealth going forward. We just view the world differently and provide different things to our family and our community.
Country music has a way of talking about real life problems in a way that many rural or small town folks can relate to. The genre also has a tendency to stay very superficial about meaningful and deep topics.
Still, with some perspective, all of the concerns about going to Heaven are pretty superficial. In light of eternity with God, even the family concerns and future plans are irrelevant. They aren’t quite as superficial as drinking or dancing, but they aren’t exactly eternal in nature. There is nothing deeply abiding about my financial plans that renders them more than a passing concerns in light of Heaven.
Does that mean that we should stop concerning ourselves entirely with our world?
I don’t think so.
We can still approach every day as if we are going to do the best we can for it. We can still plan and set aside every day as if our future is guaranteed. Teach and train your children as if your legacy is promised on Earth. Make decisions based on those plans and assess immediate dangers to ensure, or insure, that you will not be devastated for your worldly existence if you experience an emergency.
This isn’t about storing up things in this world, but about being good stewards of what we have been granted control over. It is just important to remember that you aren’t taking any of it with you. Every decision should be made to steward the things we have here to be given to future generations. To make them better.
When I was at Basic Training for the Army, I had a Drill Sergeant who constantly reiterated that we should always be “improving our fighting position.” The concept is that you work through immediate threats. When there is no imminent danger, you build up barriers and obstacles to make future threats less daunting. He was kind of a stickler. He was walking around the dining facility and screaming at new trainees to clean up after themselves. Not wanting to be the target of his wrath, I quickly inhaled what was left of the food on my tray, and realized, much to my dismay, that in our hustle to get our food, my fellow victims and I had spread 3-4 napkins on the table and spilled some pepper.
It took less than maybe ten seconds to quickly snatch up the napkins and put them with the rest of the trash on my tray. Using the same napkins, I quickly wiped the pepper from the table onto my hand and included it with the rest of the trash. We organized the napkin dispenser, placed the condiments in their respective positions, and quickly grabbed everything we had brought with us to the table, to the dishwasher.
The point is that it took us only a few moments to clean up and leave it nice for those who would sit just a few seconds later where we had been.
The other point is that when we sat down, things were already imperfect. Rather than fuss about it or stomp our feet, we left it better than we found it.
Can you imagine how much better our world would be if we all approached life that way? Maybe we wouldn’t get distracted by superficial things, and maybe I wouldn’t find myself unable to avoid the twang of superficiality seeking drinking and dancing in lieu of an immediate transcendence to Heaven.
Until then:
In the meantime, perhaps we try our best to take care of what we have, while doing so for the purpose of honoring God?
I think that is the actual message of scripture. It can all be taken away tomorrow, but we are to prepare for that without growing attached or worshipping that stuff. We don’t even really know what Heaven will be like, if we’re being honest. We have some ideas, but they are vague and intangible. I read Randy Alcorn’s “Heaven” several years ago and liked the idea. That doesn’t mean he has it nailed, but it was a great perspective on what it might be like.
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