As I have aged, I have mellowed in many ways. Although I have (mostly) always been a fairly laid-back guy, I suffered, like most young men, from bouts of agitation and aggression. But the larger part of that is gone now. Things that formerly upset me no longer do. Events or happenings that aroused my ire are now powerless to awaken those old feelings. The impatience and impetuosity of my youth have largely been replaced by an experience-driven realization that much of what I used to think was urgent and important simply is not. In short, stuff that bothered me doesn’t bother me anymore. I have (mostly) gotten over it.

While my boyish perturbations no longer provoke me, I have grown into some new ones. Specifically, and acutely, I have become rigidly protective of my stuff. Let me be clear: I am not saying that possession of my stuff has an outsized place of priority in my life. Rather, I am telling you that I prefer the way in which I organize my stuff. I do not wish for it to be disturbed. Looking at my home office or my church office, it surely appears to the casual observer that both are a bit of a mess. You might look into my study and determine that it is chaotic. That is probably true. But it is my chaos, and I (mostly) know where everything is. Even if I do not know where everything is, I do know where it belongs. Mine is a managed and organized chaos, I contend. When I need something, I can go straight to it—most of the time. Some of the time, at least. At worst, I will find it. Eventually. But it is mine.

In reality, none of it actually belongs to me. All that I have belongs instead to God. He is our Creator, and he is our Redeemer. The Son of God, God in the flesh, Immanuel, Jesus Christ, came to save us from sin. I believe that the salvation that Jesus brought saves us also from our desires, our wants, and our earthly priorities. Jesus saves us as well from the “stuff” that sidetracks our hearts. He saves us from the mores and the wisdom of the world. Jesus saves us from the disaster that looms when we strike out in our own direction—when we determine to gather what we believe is ours to keep, whether tangible or intangible, and to live our own way. Jesus saves us from our boyish—and girlish—perturbations and our youthful lusts so that we might experience life in its fullness, both in the now and in the not yet.

In Exodus 19, Jehovah God said, “All the earth is mine.” God’s statement in this context was in reference to his declaration that the Hebrew peoples whom he called out of Egypt were to be for him a treasured possession. He separated them to be his people. And they were also intended to be God’s people to all the other people around them. For, after God announced that they were his special, treasured possession, he also proclaimed that they were set apart by God to be to him “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

In other words, God did this for them so that he might prepare them to reach the rest of his creation. Again, God stated, “All the earth is mine.” His people were sanctified in order to fulfill his mission to help the entire world see that God desires them to be close to him through the love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We are now those sanctified people, set apart to help the whole world see that God desires to be near them.

–Ricky