But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him…Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world–the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does–comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. (1Jo 2:5.15-17 NIV)

What do you love? Do you love the world? It will pass away and its desires too. Acknowledgement with people? That’s blowing mere bubbles and great nothingness. Honour? That’s just a passing shadow. A big name in this world? Soon it is forgotten. Favour with the high and mighty? Then your really clutching at straws. Friends? They come and go like the tides of the oceans, like summer rains or the seasons. Father and mother? They are but mortal and will have to leave you sooner or later. Your children? They’re not yours really, they belong to the heavenly Father. Your own life? That’s a weaver’s coil and will be unravelled in no time. Your house? That’s about as an abiding abode as the whale was to Jonah.  It will spit you out naked with nothing to go with it. Your fields, forests and pastures? Who knows how soon somebody else will call it his own? What do you love? Vanity? That suffocates anybody in the long run. Do you love yourself? That’s probably the biggest disappointment of all in the end. Choose what you want here on earth. It’s all not more than a loss and bound to lead to serious disenchantment.

Only with God and his love do you never loose out. Therefore all saints have loved the Lord, their God. Yes, o good Lord, my soul sticks to your commandments and clings to your promises with faith, love and hope.

Proceed you soldiers from denial to enjoyment. Elect and of noble birth your called to live according to your high calling. As bride of Christ don’t get lost with temporary distractions!

We laugh at these and deride them outright. Beautiful this and that – we don’t regard it as ultimate – quite the contrary. What appears to be high and mighty, big and important too often is but burden- and cumbersome.

Money and stuff trouble and burden hearts, minds and conscience. Praise or flattery, bowing low, feigning, shaming, blaspheme even – its but blowing against the wind. Desires are sweet poison that even on the highest level of human achievement and success you find but passing fancies.

Our longing and our tears are better than worldly joys. Can you envision and grasp the hidden bliss? You’d rapidly neglect all stuff to join the wretched and despised bunch on its way to eternity.

(Gerhard Tersteegen, 1697-1769. The translation of this hymn is rather literal, but not poetical. The preceding devotion is a translation of Wilhelm Löhe’s devotion for Friday after the Sunday Invocavit (First Sunday in Lent) as found on Pg. 122 in Lob sei Dir ewig, o Jesu!   (Eternal Praise to you o Jesus!) edited by A. Schuster and puplished in the Freimund Verlag, Neuendettelsau 1949.