Belonging

“Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine” (Job 41:11, ESV).

His myositis was doing well, but he was pensive. 

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“My sister died, and I’ve got to deliver the eulogy. I’ve been a pastor, so they asked me to.”

“Have you decided what you are going to say?”

“I sure have,” he said. “The title is, ‘She Don’t Belong to You.’”

To whom do you belong? To whom do those you love belong?

Through much of my life I have walked with a sense of ownership.

I own my plans. I own my successes. I even own my defeats.

I own my family, my patients, my reputation.

I have imagined that all is under my control, and I have watched as the world laughs.

People without our Lord believe the world belongs to them or to some unnamed, unapproachable power out there. They live reactive lives, responding to the actions of fickle circumstance—making plans, and changing them as the world changes around them, hoping to steal something good and meaningful from an Olympian-like god of Fate who has never existed and never cared.

I sometimes fall back into that trap, but I know better.

“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it…” (Psalm 24:1, NIV).

“Know that the Lord is God. It is he who has made us, and we are His…” (Psalm 100:3, NIV).

Ownership means control. We often think we have it. Thank God we have so little.

The good thing about God’s ownership is that everything He controls will last; whatever I surrender to Him will be fashioned into a purpose much greater than I; when I put Him in charge, everything broken will be made whole; and someday, “everything sad will become untrue,” as C.S. Lewis wrote.

In contrast, everything I try to control on my own either breaks or fades—even my own life, even the lives of those I love.

Praise God that He owns it all. Thank God, “This life don’t belong to me.”

Dear God,

Thank you for your sovereignty over all. Help me to surrender to your plan.

Amen