A few days ago, I read this rather startling observation: “Jesus has more to say about money than about any other topic, including prayer.” I admit I was surprised to read this—and it goes to show how “down to earth” Jesus’ teaching really is. He understood where we would find ourselves tripping up, in the spiritual life—less often in our communication with God and more often in how we lived out our relationship with God in our daily lives.
It does indeed seem that we need regular reminders about the potential and power of money to wreak havoc in our lives—and the risks inherent in making money into our reason, goal, security net, excuse…we all do it, in one way or another.
I have a client who is also a freelancer—in a different field. He sometimes comments, very wisely, about how we end up focused on our “first-world problems,” like not having enough hours in the day to get our personal website work done because we’re so busy with our paid work. He’s right. So many people around the world are focused on whether there will be enough food on the table tomorrow, or if there will be electricity tonight. Our websites would have absolutely no meaning if there was no electricity to power them; they literally would not exist.
How far we have come, it sometimes seems to me, from the very earthy images that Jesus uses to reconnect us with our Creator God. Perhaps that is why I often find myself returning to images of nature for my daily Instagram posts. Mother Earth has so much to teach us—including how little we can rely on our wealth.
Consider for a moment two events in this past week: Hurricane Maria and the earthquake in Mexico City. Both of these natural disasters had no regard for wealth or poverty. They shook us to our foundations, regardless of where we stand. Water flowed everywhere, power lines were whipped about, anything was picked up by the wind and flung down anywhere else. Natural disasters don’t care how much money you have.
At our best, we also don’t care how much money you have when it comes to responding to natural disasters. We see images of people gathering to help dig trapped people out of buildings in Mexico City and clear waterlogged debris in the Caribbean.
Wealth comes in many forms—not all of them material. And with great wealth—and here I would definitely include the great fortune of not being impacted by disaster—comes great responsibility. We who are living with our first-world problems have a responsibility to reach out to those who suddenly find themselves in third-world situations.
My husband Henry is a retired priest. He’s leaving on Tuesday to spend a couple weeks as a volunteer chaplain in Houston, which is still in the beginning stages of recovery from Hurricane Harvey. He has been invited to minister with people who are living in a pair of hotels, unable to return to damaged or destroyed homes, and to the FEMA staff who are working with them. He is called to listen, pray, encourage, and support them, in whatever ways the Holy Spirit reveals to him, and to them.
He’s also been asked to bring toiletries with him—these are evidently very difficult to come by at this point—but the primary wealth he’s bringing is his own groundedness in God. He is wealthy beyond measure, in this situation: he has a home in fine shape, enough money and a car to drive to Houston, and plenty of time available to give to those less fortunate. And God has called him to be a good steward of those resources, in part by sharing them with others.
What are your many forms of wealth? How are you called to share them?
