Money and Stuff

A little bit earlier today I started feeling guilty because I haven't really been very personally "engaged" with God for awhile. I go to church and sing to Him and talk about Him there. I talk about Him with friends sometimes, but I haven't just opened up the Bible and read or just talked to God one-on-one for awhile. I decided that maybe I should read Blue Like Jazz to see if it made me feel better. I ran into a chapter that made me think about something I never really have thought about before. After reading it I felt all inspired so I picked up my Bible and read some more of Ecclesiastes and found something that seemed to go hand in hand with what I'd just read from Donald Miller. I had read the chapter called "Money."

As teenagers I don't think we consider giving money to our church very often. I think we typically just get the contribution plate-bowl-thing and pass it on to the person next to us. I guess we don't tend to think about money very much at all because we haven't quite tasted what it is to have much of it. We just expect our parents to dish out the money for our food and our clothes and any other basic needs, usually we hope that they'll give us an allowance too, and I guess we assume that they're putting some money in the collection plate as it goes by on Sunday morning. We don't really worry about expenses very much.

The reason why this chapter about money started making me think is because I'm about to enter into a miniature world of expenses. Turning sixteen this summer means I'm going to be getting a job soon, which means I'm going to actually have money -- money that I earned. It also means I'm going to be driving soon, which could mean that I won't have anymore money (what with maintenance and gas virtually being a black hole in a wallet). But the truth is is that I'm going to have my own money. I've never struggled with the sin that money can turn into because I've never tasted what it's like to have it. I'm thinking about all this because I know that this sin will be creeping up on me very soon.

Donald Miller was talking about how he didn't used to spend money very well. He always wanted to go buy little things that didn't matter, like buying a new extension chord even though he knew that there was an old one in a box in the basement. He began just wanting stuff. I fear that this might start happening to me when my own money enters my life.

After reading about that I opened up my Bible and started reading about halfway down in chapter five. It said, "Those who love money will never have enough. How absurd to think that wealth brings true happiness! The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what is the advantage of wealth -- except perhaps to watch it run through your fingers!" I feel like Solomon is saying something really wise here, he usually is. I feel like I really need to listen to those words and apply them to my life, because I know that in the next few months I will begin experiencing real money.

I love the way Donald Miller ends his chapter about money. He was talking about this one night whenever him and his friend were camping, away from the world and away from money. He said, "I remember a particular midnight walking into a meadow surrounded by thick aspens and above me all that glorious heaven glowing, and I felt like I was a part of it, what with the trees clapping hands and me feeling like I was floating there beneath the endlessness. I looked up so long I felt like I was in space. Light. No money and no anxiety." He goes on to say, "It is possible to feel that way again. It is possible not to let possessions own me, to rest happily in the security that God, not money, can give."

Solomon ends chapter five of Ecclesiastes in a very similar way. He is talking about how it is good to enjoy life and to relax. He says, "And it is a good thing to receive wealth from God and the good health to enjoy it. To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life -- that is indeed a gift from God."

So I'm left here thinking about how possessions and money are all indeed a gift from God. I'm thinking about how in some months (or maybe weeks) I'm going to be earning my own money. How I know it will be so easy for me to forget that this money came to me from God and that it's not my own. I think I've decided that since I'll be working for my own money I should probably start giving some of this to my church.

So the lesson for today ends here. I think that we all need to think about what we have and stop taking so much pride in it and getting our worth from it. Our true worth comes from God and I think we need to give some of this stuff that we call ours back to God not because He needs it, but because we need it. We need the discipline and the sacrificing of our stuff to help us understand that our stuff isn't what life is all about. "...that is indeed a gift from God." Our life is about Him.

---

Quotations from: Ecclesiastes 5:10-11, Blue Like Jazz p. 199, and Ecclesiastes 5:19