About 35 years ago, when I went through Air Force Basic Training, I had a rare pleasure. Although it’s nothing like Army, or Marine Corps field training, “me and the boys” had an opportunity to spend some “quality time” in the woods. While there, we had an even more distinct pleasure as we enjoyed the rarest of luxuries, namely, Field Rations! I’ll never forget how stale and nasty they tasted. Even though we were practically starving, we spent more time poking at them and joking about how they were left over from the Korean war than we spent eating them! “Imperishable!” It was printed right on the box! Well, if you asked me, I would have told you the food had perished before they even canned it, but that’s another story for another day. Today, I’d like you to think about all the time you put into thinking about how you look. You know, are you happy with your body? Do you think you are too heavy? Too thin? Is your hair the wrong color? Are your eyes the wrong color?. It seems almost nobody is happy with what God gave them, dreaming for an “augmentation” here, or a “reduction” there, or, if they don’t go to that extreme, at least to get a different color of contacts or dye their hair some ungodly color! Tell me, do you think God is more worried about how we look, or about how we act? Is he more concerned about “character,” or “commitment”? Then why do we spent 1000 times more effort trying to perfect our physical image and pay so little attention to our “spiritual” image? Do we not know that the bodies we inhabit are only shells? That they’re nothing like the ones we’ll inhabit eternally?
“But some may ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’ How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies…. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised IMPERISHABLE; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 1 Corinthians 15:35-44a (emphasis mine)
Unlike the Government’s precious Field Rations, none of us are imperishable. Our spirits will live on forever, but not in these bodies. Focus your efforts where they’ll get the most gain!