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PINNING YOUR DESTINY ON THE DOW

In one dark Tuesday morning, two HUGE skyscrapers were gone. Six days later, when Wall Street re-opened, more than half a trillion dollars vaporized themselves in one day. If you cling to money for your eternal security, you very well could end up holding onto thin air.

Everyone figured it would be a Black Monday when the New York Stock Exchange finally opened after the World Trade Center tragedy of September, 2001. And they were right. After the two minutes of silence to honor the dead, a firefighter and two policemen ringing the opening bell, and New York Senator Hillary Clinton there to pay tribute, the market immediately slid 684.81 points, a 7% decline. Joining it was the NASDAQ, which also careened south by 7%. Airline stocks were the worst, as we could all understand, dropping in some cases more than 40% in just a single day.

Well, friend, I don’t know how that affected your wallet. Or your confidence. But it certainly takes us to our theme text for this week, where King David — who had his own personal stock market gyrate rather wildly at times — says to God:

“I hate it when people cling to their useless idols. I have decided to cling to You.”

It’s interesting that the well-known Living Bible paraphrase describes these “useless idols” as “imitation gods.” That’s a good way to put it, isn’t it? But think about that line with me for a moment — “I have decided to cling to You” — and then let’s reflect on the reality that in just one trading day, between 9:32 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, on September 17, 2001, an estimated $600 billion simply evaporated out of America’s economy. One day we had it; the next day we didn’t. Six hundred billion dollars that people counted on, that were the nest eggs for many families, that were the financial backbone of United Airlines and American and Northwest . . . those dollars were gone. If a person was trying to “cling” to a portfolio, he or she was very likely hanging onto thin air by the next morning.

The painful days since that World Trade Center disaster have been a good time to prayerfully consider this word “cling.” What does it really mean to “cling”? We mentioned yesterday that “cling” implies an all-important, life-dependant hanging-on. Relatives were clinging to hope for several days, hoping with agonizing prayers that their loved ones would be found in the rubble. Did they pray casually about that? Did they just light a candle and then get back to their online trading? No, they pled with God in desperate fervor, with tears, with all-night vigils. You know and I know how young brides walked for endless miles through Manhattan putting pictures of their beloved up on light poles and in subway stops, grabbing any reporter with a TV camera so they could flash that tattered Polaroid picture to an audience of millions. “Have you seen my husband?” That was clinging.

Could we also say today that you can really only cling to one thing at a time? Would you agree with that? Not in terms of clinging to hope that your fiancé might be found in the rubble, and also trusting simultaneously in God. That we would all do. No, what I mean here is this: you can really only put ETERNAL faith, the security of your soul, in one thing at a time.

I’m sure many, many Christians had successful Dow Jones holdings both before and after September 11. It isn’t wrong for one of God’s people to astutely play the market, to buy on the dips, to track a company’s performance, and make prudent purchases. But would you trust your LIFE to how your Internet tech stocks are doing? Friend, in terms of your forever future, you can trust the N.Y.S.E. or you can trust in G.O.D. . . . but you really can’t do both. And I don’t say that to be flippant. I truly believe that each day, we have to decide what the one thing is that we will CLING to. Other things can be part of our lives; we can manage work jobs and church jobs and family jobs and then get on the Internet and do some business with E*Trade. But we can only cling — in regarding salvation — to our King who sits for eternity on the throne above.

We found some great bits of exhortation from a book we use often here; it’s entitled The Victorious Christian Life, by Dr. Tony Evans. And speaking of unexpected suicide flights, where a huge chunk of the Pentagon is suddenly rubble, here’s what he writes:

“Many Christians are playing spiritual roulette with the return of Christ. ‘It’s far off,’ they say, ‘and I won’t be dying soon, so I have a long time to develop a consistently victorious Christian life.’”

In other words, they aren’t yet clinging to Jesus because they think they have time to cling to something else first. For a while. If the second coming of Christ is way off in the future, and if I’m obviously not going to die for many, many years, because I’m healthy and lucky, then I’m going to cling to money today, and to sexual fulfillment next year, and to job prestige in 2010, and in real estate holdings in 2015, and when I begin to get down to the golden years, I will cling to the front door of heaven then. Jesus will get His turn when He gets His turn, but right now it’s my girlfriend’s turn and B of A’s turn and Amgen’s turn.

There’s a New Testament verse of Scripture where Jesus almost advises us how we should cling to Him. How about that? It’s found in John 15:4:

“ABIDE in Me,” He invites us, “and I will abide in you.” Then He adds: “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must abide. Neither can you bear fruit by yourself. You must abide.”

That’s almost a cliché, but after what the world went through following the New York nightmare, I think we’re beginning to understand it. “Abide in Me.” When everything else is lost, we need to just ABIDE in Christ. But more importantly, when everything else ISN’T lost, we need to abide in Him even more. When there’s competition for our affections, when the world offers us 15 attractive handles to cling to, that’s when it is hard to abide in just the one choice marked “Jesus Christ.” We’ve already observed, and really, without cynicism, that it’s natural to go to church and abide in Jesus Christ on Sabbath, September 17, or Sunday, September 18. The cathedrals and churches were packed then. But how about the weekend before, when clinging to Jesus was just one of many things clamoring for our leisure-time affections?

The hymnals in most Christian churches are filled with good musical reminders about the necessity of clinging. Do you recall this one by Joachim Neander? “ALL My Hope on God Is Founded.” Or how about #185 in my Adventist hymnal? “Jesus Is All the World to Me.” Friend, that shouldn’t be just the cry of Will L. Thompson’s heart; it should be yours and mine too.

And speaking of competing affections, and our natural inclination to give the S&P 500 part of our hearts, how about #322 from that same hymnbook? “Nothing Between” by Charles A. Tindley: “Keep the way clear! Let nothing between.”

You know, I think the world is always moved and inspired by a man or a woman who can have many good things in their life, and successfully prioritize all those good things, and achieve what we sometimes call “multi-tasking” . . . and yet just cling to the one thing. We have to have jobs, and earn money, and feed our families. But how do we keep the job from ruling our lives, and feeding our fallen egos? We want to own a new car — and that’s all right. Christians buy and sell cars and trade up and even own dealerships. But how do we hold onto the steering wheel of a nice new car without spiritually clinging to that piece of metal, which might, in a flash, be a heap of twisted debris in the parking lot of the Pentagon? Friend, every day of our lives, this business of ordering our priorities is Item #1. Learning how to have possessions and friendships within the sphere of our daily existence, and still obey the command of this Christian hymn: “Keep the way clear! Let nothing between.”

You know, the Apostle Paul did this. He had things in his life. He ate and drank and slept; he had friendships; he actually made a living building tents with some Christian friends of his. He traveled about; you can read how he went on more than a few interesting boat rides. But when it came time to cling to something, when facing the blade of the executioner, Paul knew how to sort out priorities. There were boat rides and then there was Jesus, and he says it so simply:

“For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
“I know whom I have believed,” he writes to his friend Timothy, “and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him against that day.”

You can sing that one too, by the way: Daniel W. Whittle borrowed that verse verbatim and wrote a great classic hymn with it.

The author of Hebrews — some scholars say Paul again; others say no — is of like mind.

“Let us throw off everything,” he writes, “that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” And then this prescription for good clinging, for chalk-on-your-palms hanging on to that bar: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”