March 3: You Can't Take It With You
♫ Music:
Day 2 - Thursday, March 3
Title: YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU
Scripture: Psalm 49
Hear this, all peoples;
Give ear, all inhabitants of the world,
Both low and high,
Rich and poor together.
My mouth shall speak wisdom,
And the meditation of my heart shall give understanding.
I will incline my ear to a proverb;
I will disclose my dark saying on the harp.
Why should I fear in the days of evil,
When the iniquity at my heels surrounds me?
Those who trust in their wealth
And boast in the multitude of their riches,
None of them can by any means redeem his brother,
Nor give to God a ransom for him—
For the redemption of their souls is costly,
And it shall cease forever—
That he should continue to live eternally,
And not see the Pit.
For he sees wise men die;
Likewise the fool and the senseless person perish,
And leave their wealth to others.
Their inner thought is that their houses will last forever,
Their dwelling places to all generations;
They call their lands after their own names.
Nevertheless man, though in honor, does not remain;
He is like the beasts that perish.
This is the way of those who are foolish,
And of their posterity who approve their sayings. Selah
Like sheep they are laid in the grave;
Death shall feed on them;
The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning;
And their beauty shall be consumed in the grave, far from their dwelling.
But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave,
For He shall receive me. Selah
Do not be afraid when one becomes rich,
When the glory of his house is increased;
For when he dies he shall carry nothing away;
His glory shall not descend after him.
Though while he lives he blesses himself
(For men will praise you when you do well for yourself),
He shall go to the generation of his fathers;
They shall never see light.
A man who is in honor, yet does not understand,
Is like the beasts that perish.
Poetry:
The Scattered Congregation
by Tomas Tranströmer
(translated by Robert Bly)
I
We got ready and showed our home.
The visitor thought: you live well.
The slum must be inside you.
II
Inside the church, pillars and vaulting
white as plaster, like the cast
around the broken arm of faith.
III
Inside the church there’s a begging bowl
that slowly lifts from the floor
and floats along the pews.
IV
But the church bells have gone underground.
They’re hanging in the sewage pipes.
Whenever we take a step, they ring.
V
Nicodemus the sleepwalker is on his way
to the Address. Who’s got the Address?
Don’t know. But that’s where we’re going.
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU
Slouched among his hoarded abundance, the man in today’s painting has eyes for nothing. He stares sightlessly at his own navel. Not only is he oblivious to the angelic sword of judgment over his head, but he fails to enjoy––or even see––the things he has amassed.
There is a repeated theme in Jesus’ life and ministry. Beginning at the Incarnation, in which the Word gave up his place at the right hand of the Father to become man, and stretching from there to his temptation in the wilderness, passion, and crucifixion, Jesus models a pattern of leaving everything behind.
He then calls others to emulate him. Think of his mother, who risks everything for her pregnancy, and dedicates her life to raising her Son. The disciples leave their professions and families to follow him. According to tradition, Mary Magdalene abandons a lucrative (if sinful) lifestyle for love of Christ. Paul is torn from pharisaical success to live as a nomadic, poverty-stricken missionary among the Gentiles.
We know, as Christians, that we must not trust wealth. As today’s scripture teaches, wealth cannot save us: “Those who trust in their wealth / And boast in the multitude of their riches, / None of them can by any means redeem his brother.” But do we take seriously the call to leave it behind?
Think of today’s poem. That haunting second stanza – “Inside the church, pillars and vaulting / white as plaster, like the cast / around the broken arm of faith.” How many of our daily efforts go to polishing our “pillars and vaulting” of apparent holiness, using them to hide the “broken arm” of our quailing faith?
With my niceness, with my public displays of faithfulness on social media or at church, with my declarations of how much I know about God, or my compulsive need to help people, am I inhabiting real faithfulness or a white sepulcher, into which I hoard others’ good opinions?
I do not mean to suggest that each of us throw out all our stuff, right now, today. Even so, we are not exempt from the eventualities of Christ’s command to take up our cross and follow. The price of receiving the gift of Christ’s self is, simply, to let everything else go because it is not him.
This is true for material things like money, possessions, and nice clothing, but also for other goods: health, food, positive reputation, physical beauty, fulfilling relationships, happiness. I can’t take these things with me because clinging to them diminishes my soul. The more firmly I grasp whatever I think I have, the more adamantly I refuse the abundance God offers to me.
But when I enter the freedom of loss, and ask only for Christ in return, I open myself to the life God is eager to give – a life that begins and ends with the gift of his Son. I declare, with the Psalmist, “God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, / For He shall receive me.”
Lent is always and only bound for Easter. But it is not Easter yet. For these forty days we willingly, by way of our fast, practice abandoning our earthly comforts for the sake of choosing Christ.
We are walking in the desert after the pattern of Christ. We are thirsty and tired. We are sacrificing our belief that we deserve to be comfortable, assured by faith that as we persevere we will be emptied and opened.
As we walk, we begin to perceive Christ with us. He is here too, in step with our toil, gifting himself in abundant measure as we persevere through this barren land.
Prayer
“O Christ, in whom the final fulfillment
of all hope is held secure,
what I so wanted has not come to pass.
So let me remain tender now, to how
you would teach me. My disappointments
reveal so much about my own agenda for my life,
and the ways I quietly demand it should play out:
free of conflict, free of pain, free of want.
You are the King of my collapse.
You answer not what I demand, but what I do not
even know how to ask.
Not my dreams, O Lord,
not my dreams,
but yours, be done. Amen.”
––Prayer fashioned from “A Liturgy For the Death of A Dream,”
Every Moment Holy, vol. 1, by Douglas McKelvey
Alea Peister
Copywriter for Deloitte Digital
Alumna, Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
The Man Who Hoards (L'homme qui thésaurise)
James Tissot
1886–1894
20 x 12.9 cm
Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn, New York
The Man Who Hoards is one of a group of paintings by artist James Tissot illustrating parables told by Jesus to his followers. Here, a rich man amasses possessions, taking pride in their accumulation rather than praising God for their plenitude and use. Enamored by the goods and treasures that surround him, he remains oblivious to the threat of death hovering behind him in the form of a sword-bearing angel.
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/13401
About the Artist:
James Tissot (1836–1902) was a successful French painter and illustrator in Paris before moving to London in 1871. Tissot enjoyed great success as a society painter in Paris and London in the 1870s and 1880s. While visiting the Church of St. Sulpice in 1885, he experienced a religious vision, after which he abandoned his former subjects and embarked on an ambitious project to illustrate the New Testament. In preparation for the work, he made expeditions to the Middle East to record the landscape, architecture, costumes, and customs of the Holy Land and its people, which he recorded in photographs, notes, and sketches. Unlike earlier artists, who had often depicted biblical figures anachronistically, Tissot painted his many figures in costumes he believed to be historically authentic, carrying out his series with considerable archeological exactitude. His series of 365 illustrations showing the life of Christ was shown in Paris, London, and New York, before being bought by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900. Tissot spent the last years of his life on paintings from the Old Testament.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tissot
https://www.jamestissot.org/
About the Music:
“Psalm 49 - Wealth & Death” from the album Love the Psalms, Vol 4
Lyrics:
Hear this, all of you people;
And give ear, all you who live in this world,
Both low and high, rich and poor together.
My mouth shall speak in wisdom;
And my heart will meditate and understand.
I will incline my ear to a proverb;
I will solve my riddle to the music of the harp.
Why should I fear in trouble,
When sin of my enemy, it surrounds,
Those who trust in wealth and boast in riches?
No one, none can redeem someone's life
Or give God a ransom for them;
Ransom for life, it's too costly, can't suffice.
None can live forever and then never see the grave.
Everyone knows that the wise die too
Just like the foolish and stupid do
All of them leaving their fortunes behind.
Forever they'll find their graves their homes,
Even though they named the land their own.
Their tomb, their home for all generations.
People cannot escape death with wealth but,
Like animals they will die.
Straight to the grave they descend and decay.
Such is the fate of the foolhardy,
The end of those pleased with their lot.
Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol;
Death shall be their shepherd;
And Sheol be their home.
But God will ransom my soul, my soul;
Ransom it from the power of Sheol,
For he will receive me.
[Instrumental]
Do not be in awe when some become rich,
Wealth of their houses increase;
For when they die they won't take it with them.
Though in their lifetime they think they're happy
For one is praised when they do well
They join the company of their ancestors,
Who will never again, never see the light of day.
Wealthy people do not understand
They are like the animals that die.
About the Composer/Performer:
Jason Silver is a singer/songwriter and author from Ontario, Canada. Silver’s main focus lately has been writing Christian worship music. He describes his musical journey in these words: “Most of the songs I have released over the last number of years have been Scripture-based worship songs. I just decided one day to put all the Psalms to contemporary melodies so that the modern-day church might find them more accessible. That's not to say I believe only the Psalms are useful for our worship, but they're certainly part of our tradition, and ‘profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.’ I record all of these songs in my home studio, in my spare time. I've completed the Psalms Project, though I am still refining them. I'm now working on other Scripture-based worship, and setting hymns to new melodies.”
https://jasonsilver.com/
About the Poet:
Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (1931–2015) was a Swedish poet, psychologist, and translator. His poems capture the essence of the long Swedish winters, the rhythm of the seasons, and the palpable atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer’s work is also characterized by a sense of the mystery and wonder underlying the routines of everyday life, a quality which often gives his poems a religious dimension. Tranströmer is acclaimed as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since the Second World War. Critics praised his poetry for its accessibility, even in translation. He was the recipient of the 1990 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tomas-transtromer
About the Devotion Author:
Alea Peister
Copywriter for Deloitte Digital
Alumna, Biola University
Alea is passionate about the ways art and literature teach us to pray. In her free time, she takes long walks, watches sitcoms, seeks out good coffee, travels, and reads books. She also writes poetry (which she shares on Instagram at @alea_peister, and on her blog, www.forthesakeofsharing.com). Alea works as a copywriter at Deloitte Digital. She is a 2017 alumna of Biola’s English Department and the Torrey Honors College.