Wednesday, March 16, 2016

5th Week of Lent, Thursday, 17-03-16

Genesis 17:3-9 / John 8:51-59

In Singapore, properties are either granted freehold or leasehold status. The main difference is the legal ownership of the property.

With a freehold property, the buyer owns the property and the title deed to the property. Freehold property is often more expensive because you are practically owning the property, and the land on which it sits on, for as long as you want.

Leasehold properties have a tenure of 99- or 999- years. Upon expiration of the lease, the legal ownership of the property goes back to the government. That is the general understanding.

In the 1st reading, there is another word that is used in relation to property - perpetuity. It is used in this way:
I will establish my Covenant between myself and you, and your descendants after you, generation after generation, a Covenant in perpetuity, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. I will give to you and and to your descendants after you the land you are living in, the whole land of Canaan, to own in perpetuity, and I will be your God.

With that, the idea moves from that of the real estate's understanding of freehold or even perpetuity to that to that of a higher and deeper understanding of eternity.

The Covenant that God made with His people is a Covenant made for eternity and the land, even though made in perpetuity, is only a temporary sign of that eternal Covenant.

Through Jesus, God has also made a eternal Covenant with us. And Jesus tells us in the gospel that whoever keeps His word will never see death.

Indeed all things shall pass, but God's Covenant and His love for us will continue into eternity. So let us not get too absorbed with the temporary but see it as a sign of the eternity that God has promised us.