“Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.” (Luke 16:3 KJV)
A scandal has been found out, a new administration is coming in, or any of a dozen situations where you realize that you are not going to be able to take it all with you. Did you ever notice that the first thing to disappear when faced with a delima is your heart? It is strictly business now. It is time to do what you have to do to survive. No mater how crooked things were, they may get a good deal worse to secure what needs to be secured before the judge’s hammer comes down. It is almost funny to watch what people tend to come up with for their solution. Some are even quite clever. Yet at the end of the day, are they not all like rats trapped in a cage making the best of an inevitable situation? So many ways to pull off a last stand that really becomes the hill to die on. Trying to manage the unmanageable often does that to people. Granted, it does not appear unmanageable at the moment. A way out seems to emerge and the game of trying to find that one trick begins.
The sad part is that once you have forfeit your heart, your mind acts with total independence much like it has been severed. The dangerous lie is that you think that if you do not use your head that there will be no heart to save. The great irony is that the only way to salvation is through belief which begins in the heart. Putting on great heart felt demonstrations of real love like laying down your life for someone else is thought by the thinkers to be suicide. Yet it is by laying one’s life down that it is later retrieved.
The part of the story that is most telling is that when faced with big decisions, we rarely take very long to decide what our course of action will be. Perhaps part of that is that we feel like our time for a decision is short. Then again, short or long, it is usually made sooner rather than later. An empty or shallow heart will collapse quickly to the mind. A strong well exercised heart will instruct the mind. Thus what you do in secret you will eventually do in public. How you handle little responsibilities will show up in how you handle big ones. Who you are willing to serve will reflect where your trusts are. If your decisions are eternal, is it not worth evaluating where you spend your strength each day? It is a shame that the steward did not understand the forgiveness that he was offering well enough to ask for some himself.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9 KJV)