There is a line in Luke 12.33 that captured my attention. It speaks to the journey we are on together here. This is the line: “Make purses for yourself that do not wear out.”
A purse is that into which you put something that has come to mean something to you that you want to carry around with you; something that will add to your life like security or self-definition. Generally you won’t put something into your purse that means nothing to you. Why carry around something that does not mean anything to you. A purse is an empty space which you fill.
I can’t help wonder if it is an image of the soul. As we have mentioned before, at the center of our soul, that part of us that is really who we are, there is a searching, a seeking, to find meaning to this thing called life. This search for meaning, for that sense of “this is who I am”, is what separates human beings from their animal friends. In essence what this means is that we try to fill the emptiness with something that will come to mean something to us. Hence the image of a purse.
The desire to have a sense of ok ness to life, that sense that I mean something to my Creator means a lot to each of us, I think. The problem is does what we try to fill our lives with give us that sense of groundedness we seek.
And will they last. You see, whatever God I look to find that sense of “connect,” that sense of “groundedness” has to be there when the lights go out. In every person’s life, there are hard times; those times things happen that we had not planned on. It could be health issues, relationship issues, work issues, financial issues. Whatever they are, they challenge that center deep down. So the question becomes, I think, does what I focus on to find a sense of meaning have staying power. Or to use the words of the purse image, will they wear out. Only you know the answer to that.
See you next week.
