Grains of Sand

AppEngine Development (Google Images) The red light flashed on and off in my mind. “ Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? ” (Luke 16:10, 11) The context is how we handle our worldly possessions and whether we possess them or they possess us. The bottom line is given to us in verses 13: “ You cannot serve both God and money. ” But what intrigued me this morning was that little phrase from verse 11: “ ...if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches .” Call me stupid, but I never noticed before what this verse was eluding to. I always thought that Jesus was saying that if we handled a little bit of money well, He’d give us more. The context is money, after all. And money is something our minds turn to all too frequently becaus...

I struggle with "stuff." A part of me says that all of this "stuff" is God's blessing on my life. It is, otherwise I wouldn't have it. Another voice reminds me that in all of this blessing there is a fatal flaw. God didn't put the flaw there; it is a warp in my own character. Wanting more is fraught with danger. Sometimes more really is better, but the more I have, the more I struggle against wanting more. This urge goes beyond material things—though they are the most obvious. The drive for more covers whatever I want more of, be it material, physical, emotional, yes, even spiritual. I'd better qualify this latter statement. It can't be wrong to want to possess more of God, or to know His Word better, or to love and serve Him at a higher level. However, that's true until the acquiring of all things spiritual, as well as all the other things, becomes my exclusive goal. Jesus said: " Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed ...

Up to this point in Jesus' famous sermon, the disciples probably figured that the theme didn't have much to do with them. The majority were fishermen. They had no "treasure" as far as material things were concerned, so focusing on the Kingdom was easy—well, until they thought about the cost of the commitment they had made to their Rabbi. Just a little while earlier, Jesus had taught them His prayer. In that prayer appears the phrase: " Give us today our daily bread " —Matthew 6:11. I imagine that this immediately sparked some chaotic thoughts in the minds of the men who had left their livelihood behind them to follow Christ. In the euphoria of the moment, they might not have not thought about how their families were going to survive without that income. That phrase in the prayer was a reminder of who they were dependent upon to meet those needs. But Jesus knew that His followers would have moments of anxious concern about the practical realities of life, so ...