A bank issued credit card declaring how their card is so much better than every else’s ends the commercial by asking, “What’s in your wallet?”
Jesus may be asking something similar.
Scripture
Kingdom of heaven is coming now. Treasures are providing benefit now in how we treat one another and we live in this world and how we interact. Yes it is about money. Jesus is definitely concerned about how we use our money and possessions to be a blessing to others and not just a blessings for ourselves. What most people treasure are often only temporary.
Americans are only 6% of the world’s population. Yet we consume 43% of the world’s resources. We suffer from obesity while a billion people live with constant hunger.
Questions to consider
Do we really know what our needs are?
How can we as a community set a standard to oppose the rampant consumerism of culture? (no designer labels)
How do your spending habits adversely affect your walk?
If purity of heart is to will one thing, then where does your heart lie?
What does it mean to be a generous giver? (Paul said that as we are blessed then we give)
Can I give without attaching strings? (tithing)
If our church building burned to the ground, would anyone miss it besides us?
Bono of U2 has used his status to increase the Kingdom of God here and now. In 1982, thorugh the Live Aid and Band-Aid he helped Ethiopians. But not only that he traveled there to make sure the funds were used honestly and effectively.
What he saw changed his life. He worked at an orphanage for six weeks. “You wake up in the morning and the mist would be lifting,” he reminisces. “You’d walk out of your tent and you’d count bodies of dead or abandoned children. Or worse, the father of a child would walk up to you and try to give you his living child and say, ‘You take it, because if this is your child, it won’t die.’”
He now works fiercely to change the policies of governments and organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fun—in order that funding for public health, education, and essential social services will increase rather than decrease. He seeks to change the views of some of the movers and shakers of our time such as Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, President Bush. He has persuaded countries to lend financial muscle to address the AIDS crisis in Africa.
Do what you can where you are at? Whether it is bringing in white socks, or collecting change for starving children, or supporting a child through one of those programs, or shoveling the snow of the widow next door so she can use that money somewhere else, or helping someone with unexpected expenses, or allowing someone to use your guest room free of charge, or fixing a meal for someone who is struggling with an illness or struggling to take care of a family member who is ill.
Using your money and resources to make this world a little better place.
Lord Jesus, help do all that you would have me to do. And then, Lord, give me the willingness to do more. Amen.
