Serenity- Significance- Security

Week two of the money series at Vintage was from Luke 12, the rich fool, who looks at all "his" stuff and decides to pull down his storage barns and build bigger ones to hold "his" massive crops and then retire to a life of ease. Too bad he drops dead the night he decides on this project.

Curiously, A pointed out that this is pretty much the American Dream, except for the dropping dead part. I can pretty much see the commercial in my head. And I suppose it's a testimony to how brainwashed I am, but I found myself wondering, in real time, "what's so bad about this guy's plan? " The point of the story was....namely, that, again, we don't own our stuff, we just manage. The Rich Fool was convinced that he owned it all and therefore no longer needed God's provision, but instead, that he could move forward in life without worrying about working anymore or having his needs met.

Aaron made the excellent point that we work for significance (look at all my great stuff, I must be something) serenity (I have enough that I don't have to worry about daily needs) and security (my future is insulated from anything that scares me). These things we strive for will be ours in eternity, but we get mixed up and try to grasp them in this life. I had never thought specifically about the fact that these are things are part of the promise of heaven....just one more way my Sunday School image of halos and harps needed to be de-constructed. These things are good things that God intends for us to have in the right context, just not in place of a relationship with Him. They make poor substitutes for the greater good of the adventure of trusting Him.

I probably talk about money and stuff more than other people I know. It's considered bad manners, a culturally shielded area of our lives that we are allowed to be private about. But what we believe about money and stuff dominates what we do every day of our lives...and therefore, it is very interesting to me. I am extremely interested in believing things that are true about money and possessions. I want to be confident that I didn't waste time and energy in life working for something that I didn't need to worry about. All I know is that "considering the lilies,
how they grow....they toil not, neither do they spin, but Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these" ....you can't fake that. I forget sometimes and find myself toiling and spinning, instead of just walking out my back door and seeing the flowers and the birds and remembering that it matters to God about us.