I worry about money.
There. I admitted it. Even after today’s Gospel from Luke 16 where
Jesus tells us in the parable that “You cannot serve God and wealth.”
We are not financially wealthy people. We have lived with the majority of our income
coming from the full time employment of my husband. I’ve worked part time, hoping to make enough
money each month to make the house payment.
And, for the most part, I was successful at meeting that goal. But now, I’m in school and I’m costing us
money rather than making us money.
Ooo. That sounded like I serve
wealth, didn’t it?
One time, years ago, I was told in a talk (probably from
someone in Tupperware) that it’s about what money can do. What doors can it open and for whom? Does having a little extra jingle mean an
additional activity for a child or does it mean a little more to give away to
someone in more need? For us, having the
security of those dollars from my part time work ensured that we were secure in
our home, and that we could splurge once in a while for a date night. Later, it became money for preschool and then
school activities.
Now, we really live on a single income. And the income is from our own business, so
if there’s no work (which, thank God, has not ever been the case), there’s no
income. It puts a lot of pressure on
Jeff and he puts in a serious amount of time to ensure our security and our
lifestyle and my education.
Even though he works a lot, Jeff also does a serious amount
of volunteering. He’s the
president-elect for his Rotary Club. He’s
on the church board. He’s a member of a
number of local business organizations and he was just the Master of Ceremonies
for the Minnesota Literacy Foundation Luncheon last week—another organization
that wants him on their board of directors.
(The answer is no.)
For us, wealth is not about the money in the bank, but
without the money in the bank we would not be able to do all the things we do
to experience all the other “wealth” we “bank.”
We know that God has provided us with all these things and that what we
do to make a living only helps us to live out God’s call to us in and for this
world. We give financially when we feel
we can. We give of our time far more
often, and often to the point of exhaustion.
And yet, we are wealthy.
So, I guess, I do worry about money because of what money
can do in this hurting world. I worry
about having enough to live on, yes, but I worry about having enough to give as
we are able. I may not be making much of
a living, financially, these years I’m in school, but I am still making a
life. And I hope that what I am doing is
all about serving God. And I hope that
at the end of all this education I will be able to make a living so that Jeff
can take some time off from those responsibilities, can slow down a little and
will go fishing. (See the post from August 27.)
O Jesus, you presented parables that are hard to hear and
harder to understand. We know that we
are not to be anxious about earthly things, but money is so important to our
survival. We know that we sometimes want
it for the wrong reasons, but most of the time we just want enough to be able
to have a roof over our head and food in our stomachs. Help us to remember that money’s value is in
what we can do with it, not in what it can do for us. Teach us to understand that difference. Amen.