Colossians 1:12-14 Giving thanks to the Father, which has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: I knew a man who had amassed great wealth; but had no children to inherit it. Smitten, however, with the strange propensity to found a house, he left his riches to a distant relative. His successor found himself suddenly raised from poverty to affluence, and thrown into a position he had not been trained to fill. He was cast into the society of those to whose tastes and habits and accomplishments he was an utter and awkward stranger. Did many envy this child of fortune? They might have spared their envy. Left in his original obscurity he had been a happy peasant, whistling his way home from the plough to a thatched cottage, or on winter nights, around the blazing faggots, laughing loud and merry among unpolished boors. Child of misfortune! He buried his happiness in the grave of his benefactor. Neither qualified by nature nor fitted by education for his position, he was separated from his old, only to be despised by his new, associates. And how bitterly was he disappointed to find that, in exchanging poverty for opulence, daily toil for luxurious indolence, humble friends for more distinguished companions, a hard bed for one of down, this turn in his fortunes had flung him on a couch, not of roses, but of thorns! In his case, the hopes of the living and the intentions of the dead were alike frustrated. The prize had proved a blank; a necessary result of this fatal oversight, that the heir had not been made meet for the inheritance. Is such training needful for an earthly estate? How much more for heaven. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: |
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