Dead to the World--by Linden Malki

NEW! NEW!  is considered the most powerful marketing tool out there. What is there about "new!"  One suggestion I recently ran across is that many of us are looking for something outside of themselves to fill a discontent inside. What actually happens is that New! wears off and the discontent is still there. Reaching for Newer!  doesn't help in the long run, either. In today's world, we see lots of advice to try this! try that! have experiences! push the limits! You can wind up with a lot of stuff, a lot of disappointments, hurts, betrayals and pain. We can wind up with stuff we don't need, never use, just clutters up our lives. We can have people in our lives that don't fill the empty spaces, and entice us into places and things that leave us with scars and a resume full of disasters. There are people who try to use us to fill their empty spaces. In the long run, people will leave us one way or another, and we will leave people as well.   It has been said that "none of us get out of this world alive", which is true of our physical, mortal bodies.

Most of us human beings want a lot out of life. What did Adam and Eve want?  They wanted to "be like God"--which is a noble ambition. The problem is that they were looking in the wrong place.  Think about it: they had God readily available in a sense that we will not know on this earth.  But who did they ask? A being who rejected God, in the form of a passing snake, who pointed the way of rebellion rather than imitation. They had been told that defiance would lead to death.  It did--you could say that in some way we are all dead.  Some of us are spiritually dead, and recognize nothing beyond this world; and some of us are dead to this world, and alive with Christ.                                                                                           

There is an old spiritual that starts "This World is Not My Home"  which is an amazing truth.  We were not originally created for this world, and it is not ultimately satisfying.  If we insist on living our own life our own way, we are dead to a life beyond ourselves.  If we are willing to die to this world, we will be raised with Christ to the life we were created to live.