Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” – Matthew 10:23

Today's Scripture Reading (January 25, 2024): Mark 10

I am rich. I sometimes get asked that question so I thought I would throw it out there. There is absolutely no question about it. And that is also the way that I answer the people who choose to ask me. I am rich. This fall, when it was time to take my car in to have the winter tires put on, I decided to empty the cubby hole on my dash that replaced my ash tray. There was so much change in there that it took a few minutes to get the job done. It was money that I had essentially thrown away because I didn’t have anything else to do with it. And now, with that money safely placed in a box in my office, I have already started to rebuild the small fortune hidden in my car. When I open the refrigerator or kitchen cabinets, there is always food in there. Maybe not the chips or unhealthy snacks that I might be craving, but there is always food in the kitchen to eat. Whenever I open my closet, I have clothes; even if it is close to washing day. In fact, I have so many articles to wear that my clothes have had to spread out into two closets. (Although, in my defense, two-thirds of my closet is filled with my wife’s clothes.) And, with a dose of transparency, I don’t have a lot of debt. My home is the only significant debt I possess. It is amazing how far money goes when you don’t have to service any debt. I am rich, so this passage is about me.

But my suspicion is that you are rich too, maybe even richer than me. Most of our money problems are really rich people problems, whether or not we want to accept that. We are rich. We possess things that we don’t have to possess; I know because I also have a lot of those things. I have Television Channels that I don’t need. I pay for streaming services, including the music streaming service, Spotify, that I could live without. I don’t want to, and so I make sacrifices in other areas so that I don’t have to do without. But that is a decision of what I do with my money. And if I go into debt because of it, well, that is my fault, no one else’s.

All of this means that I have the potential of setting up things that might get in my way when it comes to worship. The temptation is there to begin to worship the things I have, rather than God. I have made the point that whatever keeps you away from church might have become an object of worship. But it is just as possible that whatever you spend your money on might also have become an object of worship in our lives.

It is up to us to make sure that these things do not become our gods. One of the ways of doing that is recognizing the power that things exert over our lives. And when it comes to money, that often means developing a generous attitude, and being willing to give it away as God instructs.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Luke 18