Reading in Jonathan Edwards’s sermon "The Christian Pilgrim," I stayed on this statement for some time.
"When we are called to any secular business, or charged with the care of a family, if we improve our lives to any other purpose, than as a journey toward heaven, all our labour will be lost."
If Edwards is correct—and I have more than a passing suspicion that he is correct on some level—then this points to the fundamental and ineluctable paradox of the Christian life, that the very animus and character of our life consist in the dynamic of ever working to sustain that which we must strive to let go. Unless we should give up and resign ourselves to destitution or death, or both, ever must we grasp at this life even as God pries loose our grip to take our hand—and we must even will the loosing of our grip....
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