Wise Investing

In the church in Ephesus, the people were fighting because each had his or her own vision for how the church should work according to their own desires. They wanted to make the church the Body of Christ fit into their own image, rather than seek how they could fit into the Body of Christ. They wanted to make God fit into their lives and follow them rather than seeking to follow God and see where he wanted to fit them into his plans. This selfishness played out in their fighting and arguing about things that really didn’t matter. And Paul has some tough words for them.

He says, you are acting according to darkness rather than walking as, “children of the light.” He points out their foolishness and their foolish investments in things that won’t last and won’t matter in the long run. I love how the Holy Spirit uses Paul to get them back to a right focus. He says, “Try do discern what is pleasing to the Lord.” This is such a simple phrase, but imagine how different your life would be if you lived by this statement. If before you gossiped about a co-worker, or before you said something mean to your family member, or before you started browsing the internet, or before you took out your credit card you asked yourself, “Is what I’m about to do pleasing to the Lord?” Challenging thought!

It’s challenging because it pulls us out of looking just at ourselves and our desires and gets us to focus on real wisdom, on the source of wisdom and life, on God himself. It causes us to act differently and to have a different focus. And this is important because Godly wisdom calls us to be different from the world around us. The Holy Spirit makes this point so powerfully in the last part of the reading:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

How we live is important. We aren’t saved by our works, only by the grace of God, but how we live is a witness to the faith and the gift of salvation that we have. And to live wisely is to invest wisely in the limited amount of time that God has given us in this world. The reading says to make the best use of time, but the actual literal translation is, “to be buying up the time,” and I love that. Buy up every opportunity to witness to the grace of God in your life! Invest in what is good and holy and avoid what is not because time is limited and the days are evil.

That’s so true but we don’t often think about time do we? I have a friend who was telling me that his company rewarded some salespeople by sending them to Costco and telling them that they could keep whatever they could fit into a shopping cart. I enjoyed thinking about what I might do, what my strategy might be. What would you go for? How would you fill up your cart to get the most into it? But then he told me something that completely changed my thinking and what my strategy would be. He said that they were given a time limit of 5 minutes! You would do things differently if you knew you had a time limit wouldn’t you!