I've been working on my devotional on the Sermon on the Mount, which will come out near the end of the year to go along with a couple books I've written on Jesus. I wrote this paragraph this morning for the day on Matthew 6:19-21:
____________
Where is your heart? You can tell by what you focus your energies
on. Where do you spend most of your time? What do you spend most of your money on? What are most of the things lying around your
home? How do you evaluate others? Do you evaluate them by what they wear? By their shoes? By the car they drive or the home they live
in? By the church they go to? By whether
they wear a tie to church? These are all external things, not a matter of one’s
heart, one’s true identity. They are all important in the world and in
business. You have to pay some attention to them to survive in the world. They
are completely unimportant to God.
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6 comments:
Why are the things in the first sentences important in evaluating the state of our heart, but the things in the last part of your paragraph are unimportant for evaluation? If the things I spend time on indicate something of my priorities with respect to God, why are slovenly dress at church (e.g.) not an indication of the place of an individual's attitude about the importance of God and/or spiritual things?
I wonder if, in a previous generation, to dress down was an act of defiance that did represent the heart. What is slovenly? Is it culturally defined?
If I were to be in an audience with the President, I would try to fit in with the dignity of the occasion by the way I dress. Why should the same not hold true when I come with my brothers and sisters into the worship of the King of Kings?
I agree that we have lost some of the awe of the holy, but it's interesting that people under 40 don't seem to feel this way about church. Right or wrong, they are different culturally on this piece. I guess we don't dress up at home to go into our prayer closet. Would you agree that some people dress up for show?
I guess we haven't completely lost our awe for the holy. At least I've never seen anybody at church in their underwear; but they probably would pray to their "daddy" at home dressed that way! Oh, well!
:-)
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