Two weeks ago, a story was reported from Budapest, Hungary, about two brothers, Zsolt and Geza Peladi, who made a meager, subsistence living by selling scavenged junk and lived in a cave on the outskirts of the city.  Officials tracked the Peladi brothers down recently after their long-lost maternal grandmother passed away in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, leaving an estate worth $6.6 billion.  German law prescribes that direct descendants are entitled to share in any estate.  Once they can produce their mother’s birth certificate, Zsolt and Geza will travel to Germany to claim their inheritance which will be shared with a sister who lives in the U.S.  From cave-dwellers to billionaires!  Now, that’s an inheritance!  It is almost too much to fathom and fully appreciate; totally unmerited, undeserved, and unearned.  They were just a part of the right family!

Such is our eternal inheritance that has been lovingly, graciously, and mercifully granted to us in Jesus Christ.  We were spiritually destitute, impoverished, homeless, and hopeless in sin.  “Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12).  But, we were born again into the family of God, born again to a living hope to receive “an inheritance which is undefiled and will not fade away, reserved for you in heaven” (I Peter 1:3-4).  We have received adoption as sons and daughters of God, fellow-heirs with Christ who will “share in the inheritance of the saints in Light” (Colossians 1:12).  The redeeming and atoning blood of Jesus has rocketed us from zero to eternal glory; He has changed our status from spiritual cave-dwellers to citizens and heirs of God’s eternal kingdom.

I wish the Peladi brothers and their sister well, and I sincerely hope that they do not find a way to squander their billions.  Corporations do it with regularity, and humans have demonstrated an uncanny ability to foolishly and extravagantly spend their way through enormous inheritances.  We should be forever grateful that even an eternity will not diminish the glory of our inheritance in Christ!  Totally unmerited, undeserved, and unearned; just a part of the right family!