Hoarding Life

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Heard a great sermon on Sunday. My pastor, Pete Alwinson, is talking about Peace this Advent season. One of the points he has made is that the Christian faith often causes one to lose peace - the peace that is found in complacency in particular. He used this great quote from Wm. Barclay:
I can see how I "hoard life" sometimes. I want it to be comfortable. I want my family to be comfortable, and my job to be comfortable and my church to be comfortable... Working in ministry makes it even easier to be like this, because I've always got a convenient comeback to those feelings that maybe I'm not really living my life in a way that builds the Kingdom as effectively as it could. I can always hark back to some ministry experience that blunts the barb of Christian conscience.

There is no place for a policy of safety first in the Christian life. The man who seeks first ease and comfort and security and the fulfillment of personal ambition may well get all these things, but he will not be a happy man; for he was sent into this world to serve god and to serve His fellow man. A man can hoard life, if he wishes to do so. But that way he will lose all that makes life valuable to others and worth living for himself.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to lay a guilt trip on myself. I just want to be honest with myself about the ramifications of my faith.  Patrick Morley quotes Dr. Schaeffer in his book, The Man in the Mirror, and points out the two "impoverished values" of personal peace  and affluence.

Personal peace means just to be let alone, not to be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city -- to live one's life with minimal possibilities of being disturbed...Affluence means an overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity -- a life made of things, things and more things -- a success judged by an ever-higher level of material abundance. (from Frances Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live, 1976)

I want to be sure that I am not committed to ease, comfort, ambition, personal peace and affluence - that I am not "hoarding my life" - so that I miss out on what I could be doing to make a difference in the world.


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