IMAGINE…YOUR NAME WRITTEN UP HERE!


12/27/18
My reading of the Scripture brought me the other day to the 10th chapter of St. Luke’s gospel.  Jesus sends out 72 of his disciples on what could be called the second missionary journey.   The first is described in Chapter 9 and was limited to the twelve apostles, and one could legitimately argue that post-healing evangelizations by the healed were the real first missionary journeys, but I’m wandering off on a tangent (Who, me?) here.  

After the 72 disciples have returned from what looks to have been an enormously successful foray into the fields of faith in which they report

“Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name,”

Jesus says

“I have observed Satan fall like lightning* from the sky.  Behold, I have given you the power ‘to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you.  Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

It’s easy to pass off that last sentence as just an “attaboy” from Jesus, but stop to think of the enormity of

“…do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

Having the spirits (demons) subject to you is no mean feat; indeed, it is probably more than most of us will accomplish in your lives.   Yet even that pales in comparison to the sure knowledge that our names are written in heaven and that, consequently, we are headed for something far greater than anything we could accomplish on this earth.   It’s more important, and a far greater thing, that we are going to heaven than anything, and I mean anything, we can do on earth.

Lots of commentators have taken this notion entirely too far; they denigrate the worthiness of success on earth, sniffing at it as inconsequential.   Success on earth, even secular success, is a wonderful thing, provided it is arrived at without abrogating God and His plans for us.  There is nothing wrong with achieving great wealth, power, and stature per se and we shouldn’t eschew such success unless we have decided that, for us, such success would be an obstacle to getting closer to God.   For most of us, however, there is nothing inherently incompatible with a life of “success” and our eternal destiny with God.   Great success does make it harder to get closer to God; note Jesus’s warnings about the relative ease of a camel’s passing through the eye of a needle and a rich person’s going to heaven.   For that reason, some have shied away from worldly “greatness” as defined by most of society.   But, for most of us, it’s not necessary to be contemptuous, or to avoid, wealth, power, prestige, etc. in order to achieve what’s really important.  

All that having been written, the point Jesus is trying to make when He says “do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven” is that whatever great things we accomplish in life, even something so great as being able to command spirits (or people, great armies, nations, or pools of wealth), it is nothing compared to our names “being written in heaven.”   As the old song paraphrases, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has ready for those who love Him.”  I believe that.

All God’s blessings, now and always.

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