Mine, Mine, Mine!

On bright, sunny days like today, my wife Candy often sings Heavenly Sunshine, that ends with “hallelujah! Jesus is mine.” Sometimes that triggers the ditty “Mine, mine, mine. Jesus is only mine.” Then she will grimace and cringe at such blatant self-centeredness. Now with her Alzheimer’s she is almost completely unaware of current happenings with no idea of the issues swirling around Donald Trump, but the irony of his assertion that the files he took from the White House are “not theirs but mine,” points to our human propensity for self-focus.

Besides Jesus’ repeated emphasis on humility and service, 1 Corinthians is clear the folly of claiming anything as “mine.”  “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift? “ (4:7) “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (6:19)

For about 40 years I have found a personal anchor in the first answer of the Heidelberg Catechism. “My only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own but belong body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.”