Articles
A Borrowed Life
Generally, we’re much more careful with things we borrow than with things we own. When I borrow, I’m accountable to someone other than myself. I don’t have to answer to anyone for the way I treat my DVD collection or my truck. I can leave my DVD’s on the floor and I can park my black truck under a pollen shedding tree. I probably shouldn’t do those things, but they’re mine, so who cares? If something happens to them, I have no one to blame but myself. However, if I borrow a DVD or a vehicle I know I have to return, everything changes. If I damage those things, I have to answer for it to the person I borrowed from. If I wreck someone else’s car because I was texting with one hand and eating a taco with the other on I-4, there’s going to be trouble. They may be heartbroken because they loved that car. They may not trust me anymore. Worst of all, they may feel personally betrayed that I wasn’t considerate enough of our relationship to take better care of it.
“For every beast of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains, and everything that moves in the field is Mine…the world is Mine, and all it contains.” (Psalm 50:10-12). In context, God tells His people He doesn’t want animals; they already belong to Him! He wants their love and trust! As a secondary application, we learn that everything in this world belongs to God, so ultimately everything we “own” is actually borrowed from Him! Our money is borrowed from Him. (2 Cor. 9:10). It’s why when we take a collection on Sunday morning, we sometimes say we’re “giving back to God a portion of that with which He’s blessed us.” Your spouses are borrowed! Jesus says there will be no marriage in Heaven (Matt. 22:30). God allows husbands and wives to borrow one another to help each other get to Heaven and endure the vanity of this temporary life under the sun (Ecc. 9:9). Even our bodies are borrowed. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Cor. 6:19).
Jesus tells so many parables about stewardship because we’re living a borrowed life. We’re stewards entrusted by our Heavenly master to take care of the people and possessions in our lives responsibly and honorably (Matt. 24:45-46). How will you hand your borrowed life back to God? When God comes back to reclaim His possessions, what we He find? Will we hand Him back a wrecked marriage? A body defiled by sin? A calendar and checkbook full of wasted time and money? Or will we show Him our love by honoring the life He’s loaned us? “Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.” (Matt. 24:46).
