One of the most luxurious homes in the world is the Villa Leopolda located on the French Riviera. This chateau boasts 80,000 square feet and is priced at a whopping $525 million. You can tell it was built by a king, King Leopold II of Belguim, with its 19 bedrooms, multiple kitchens, dining rooms, sport courts, beautiful pool, and even a movie theater and bowling alley. What a place to live!
And what if it was yours to enjoy? What if by some twist of fate you inherited the chateau? Can you see yourself walking up the grand staircase to the front door with the keys in your trembling hand. Would you laugh when the butler opened the door for you and you were free to explore your new mansion with reckless delight? Can you imagine running wildly through the lavish interior taking in the sights, sliding across marble floors, lingering by the pool, exploring the estate?
Every morning you would wake up and have to decide what extravagant wonder you would enjoy that day. Will you invite your friends over to watch a movie in your personal theater? How about having the neighbors stop by for an impromptu bowling tournament? Maybe you would host a Cook Off staged among your varied kitchens. Or something quieter, like reading a great novel in the tower, or walking peacefully in the manicured gardens or catching some rays by the pool. If you lived in a mansion like the Villa it would be up to you to decide how incredible your day was.
I'm thinking that maybe life is more like that than we think. We start out our lives in dirty ditches reckless in our sins. And then Jesus joins us in the mud only to rescue us from it. He cleans us up and gives a mansion He has designed to each of His children. It's a new life. He isn't out to just make us clean but to give us something new--something incredibly better. Imagine the unthinkable if you will, imagine being gifted the Villa of your dreams only to spend every day in its parlor. Imagine going no further than the entryway.
"You're missing the whole thing!" your friends would shout. And they would be right. There is more. There is infinitely more to God and this life lived with Him. There are still rooms filled with wonder that you have not seen or heard of; rooms full of surprises and delights. There is more.
That's what I'm learning. That we were saved from reckless sin to enjoy reckless delight in Christ and there is so much more than I first thought to this life with Him.
" Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. " - C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
