An Uprooting

The story begins with, "...a man ran up and knelt before Jesus..." and ends with "...he was shocked and went away grieving for he had many possessions."  (Mark 10:17-22).  Inside the bookends of the story, the very religious man heard Jesus say to him, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor...then come, follow me." (Mark 10:21).  We understand and sympathize.  Whether we have a little or a lot, we think it unfair for Jesus to ask such a thing.  Like the man who came with eagerness and left with sorrow, we understand the power our stuff has over us.   

The disciples obviously were not so attached to their stuff that they could not walk away from it.  When World War I came and brought to an end the Bible Training College Oswald Chambers thought would last forever, he wrote, "It is a great thing to be detached enough from possessions so as not to be held by them, because when called to uproot it is done with little real trouble..."  The call of Jesus may not uproot us from the things we call ours, but it does require us to loosen our grip so that what was His before we claimed it as ours has been returned to Him.  

What we falsely claim as ours may be our accumulated wealth, the house which shelters us, the things which define our stuff, our position in the community, or the security systems we have built around us.  Like the would be disciple, we understand the difficulty of letting go, but we also know that the abundant life promised by Jesus is found when letting go is more important than holding tightly.