Fw: the claim

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Rob Smith <toanosmith@yahoo.com>
To: Rob Smith <rsmith@mycwa.com>
Sent: Monday, October 3, 2016 7:36 AM
Subject: the claim

I recently saw a western movie where the good guys beat the bad guys.  I like that simple old theme and I like westerns.  The center of the drama was a town of poor folks who had risked everything to make their living on land they'd bought, probably sight unseen, before making the difficult trip west.  But, to their surprise, gold was found on their property.  A really bad guy, with lots of money and other bad guys under his control, barged onto their land and started mining there.  He put his own corrupt sheriff in place in the town and tried to cheat the local folks by giving them a pittance for the deeds to their land.  So it was up to the heroes of our story to save the town and the good local folks from all this.

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I thought about the deed to each of our lives.  We may tend to think that we hold the deed, ourselves, to our lives.  After all we seem to take the risks and we live inside these bodies and we make the choices and we go where we want.  Don't we hold the deed?  And when we find gold in the form of talent or success, doesn't it belong to us?  If we think about it, the deed is held by our Maker.  He placed us here, in our bodies and in this time.  We may have a lot of freedom to go where we want and do what we want but ultimately our time will end here and our bodies will return to dust and our spirit will move on to ultimately face Him.

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He holds the deed and He places the gold on His property.  He allows us to do some of the mining and He allows us to put some of the gold to work and He makes sure our needs are met.  And there may be evil forces that seek to rip the deed to our lives away from Him...but He can be counted on to protect His claim and hold onto the deed.

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Leviticus 25:²³ "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me."

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blessings,

Rob Smith