Summary: Warren Buffet tells the story about a man who was on an important business trip in Europe when his sister called to tell him that their dad had died. Her brother couldn't get back but said to spare nothing on the funeral, whose cost he would cover. When he returned, his sister told him that the service had been beautiful and presented him bills totaling $8,000. He paid up, but a month later received a bill from the mortuary for $10. He paid that, too - and still another $10 charge the month following. When a third $10 invoice was sent to him the next month, the perplexed man called his sister to ask what was going on. "Oh," she replied, "I forgot to tell you. We buried Dad in a rented suit."[i] We live in a time where short-term thinking so often is being substituted for long-term vision. But the writer of Hebrews names the source of life-giving vision. "Faith," the writer says, ". . . is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Faith carries us into deep places in our lives - in joy and hardship. Hebrews describes faith that keeps us looking up and looking out. This faith is about what we are journeying toward, not what we have left behind; this faith is rooted in the assurance that we do not create - or maintain - the world in which we live. That is accomplished by the word of God; this faith moves us toward a way of living where we have to leave behind the life we have known to receive the world God has created. Strangers. Foreigners. A people journeying toward the world God has created, not backward to the world left behind.
