I would like everyone to take a second to read John 17:11-19. There is a lot there, and I don’t really want to type it all out this morning. A great place to get to it is at www.usccb.org. It is a great reflection and after hearing it on the way in this morning, this idea hit me from out of nowhere. The Holy Spirit works that way, it just shows up.

We are not of this world. That is the message that is trying to be conveyed in this passage. We may live in this world but we should not be thinking of ourselves as of this world. It is a hard concept to wrap your mind around. I am still letting it all sink in. We should be thinking and acting like the world we really belong to, which is the next life, and what we would be doing in the Kingdom of Heaven. Again, just reflect on that for a second. We are not of this world, just like Jesus said, we are not of this world any more than He is of this world.

I have been so focused on the things happening in my life, I have lost sight of everything. So, yeah, thanks to depression, I have a hard time getting over myself. I should really be focusing on the good things, and not worried about silly little things that are of this world, when I am just merely here for a little while. My real goal is getting to the next life and making sure I am prepared for that. Maybe I am missing the entire mark on this one, but this little mind shift has made all the troubles from this week seem very small and trivial. Why? Because they mean something only in this world. It is so easy to get caught up in that, I think that maybe we have to remember that this is not the end game, this life is not the only reason we are here, we are just setting ourselves up for the work in our next life, in the Kingdom.

This does not change the fact that I still have problems, or that anxiety doesn’t creep in to screw me up, or that depression still has rewired my head to ensure I get locked down. It does give me a little more solace in knowing that I can and will make it through this, and that there is another real mission waiting on the other side. All of these little things in this world is really just prep work for the next.

May everyone be blessed and find peace today. Amen.