The other day I was thinking about how often we confuse control with ownership.

For example, I think I own my house. Technically the bank owns it. If I pay it off I have no mortgage, and then I own it, right? Wrong! If I don’t pay my real estate taxes, the government will come and take it away. While I have a lot of control, I don’t really own it.

I thought about this when Dennis and I were at a Spinners game the other night. We had tickets, which had purchased us the control of a couple of seats. For the duration of the event, those were “our” seats. We “owned” them. But we couldn’t take them with us, we couldn’t misuse them – and if we did the control we had would have been taken away from us as we were escorted out of the park.

It gets worse. We may get married – I have a wife. I can through a convenient agreement walk along side her in life, and I may even have some control over her by whatever means I can come up with. But I don’t own her. She is her own person.

We may have children, and while they are small we have lots of control. While they are big we have lots of control, too, but we may choose not to exercise that control for the sake of their assuming their own self control, which we desire. David is my son, but I do not own him (in spite of the fact I had papers to the effect once)

We might buy a stick of gum or pick up a rock along the beach, and while we may exercise great control over them we do not own them. They will slip out of our hands, and out of our control, through use, loss, or even our deaths. Even if I could have my house paid off and magically live tax free, it wouldn’t be long and it would belong to someone else. Even the things we think we own we only have on loan.

So what do we own? Our parents told us we had to own up to responsibility. I guess that means to take control of it. Maybe we can own that. I know it is related to the fact that we seem to end up owning a lot of consequences – which we usually WISH we could control but never seem to be able to, really. Yet sometimes the consequences are good, and we may accomplish great things that are difficult to wrest from us, such as a good name. While some things are harder to take from us than others are, remember that folks might lie about us. Sigh.

It would seem there is nothing that *we* can truly own in a permanent sense. It all falls apart or goes away or is forgotten, sooner or later. But in the eternal scheme of things I know three things that can be owned forever. One is our sin. Two, if we live righteously, the treasures stored up in heaven. But three is the most wonderful of all. Because you see, regardless if you live as you should or if you don’t when you die your body returns to the dust it came from, and your soul to the God who gave it. The ultimate question will be, will he keep it? Will you own eternal life? Or will you truly lose it all. That choice is in your control today.

Randy