Who Do You Serve?
“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” -- Luke 16:13
What position does money hold in your life? Is it something that is necessary for a good life but not an obsession? Is money something you crave and can never seen to have enough of? Do you view money as power? Is money your key to happiness?
How we view money says a great deal about us and, to some degree, about our experiences. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a person who grows up poor really needs to have a large bank account as an adult. Nor should it shock us that someone who has faced great emotional tragedy doesn’t value money as much as someone whose life has pretty much gone according to their plan.
Money is the difference between poverty and comfort. It determines whether you receive medical care and whether that medical care is minimal or top-notch. Money determines whether you have time for golf and vacations or whether your life consists of week after week and year after year of working two or three jobs just to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.
The problem comes when we place more importance on money than on God. It happens when we’re so busy earning more money than we need that we neglect His Word. It happens when we become so stingy with what we have -- all of which comes from God -- that we refuse to share with someone in need. We lose focus. We serve money, then God. That never works.
Do you want to put money in perspective? Do you want to understand how little or how much it means? Talk to a mother who just buried her three-year-old child because she couldn‘t afford to take him to a specialist. Ask the widow whose husband died suddenly. Or talk to the woman facing another round of chemotherapy -- with no insurance because she was too sick to work anymore. Or talk to the children who spend most afternoons, nights and weekends alone because their parents are too busy working to earn more money to spend time with them.
For some people money literally means the difference between life and death. I’m always reminded of the explanation Ted Kennedy once gave for advocating health care reform. It really wasn’t about liberal politics, no matter what his critics claimed. His son lost a leg to bone cancer when he was a boy. Kennedy said he looked around the hospital and realized for the first time that while his son would live because his family could afford medical treatment, other children would die because their families couldn’t afford that treatment.
I have so solutions to medical care reform. I have no idea how to help those who need assistance without enabling those who take advantage of others. I don’t know how much money is enough and how much money is too much. I try really hard not to judge either way.
But I truly believe that God is appalled by what He sees in our country today. We are so focused on keeping what we have for ourselves and blaming others for their circumstances that we have lost sight of what’s important. We’ve forgotten to be kind. We refrain from mercy. We don’t seek justice for those too weak to fight for themselves.
Who do you serve: God or money? It can’t be both. One will save your soul and give you a life of happiness no matter your circumstances. The other will fill your bank account and leave you empty and hard. Your life. Your choice.
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