Value for Money

We like to think that we don’t care about money; that we aren’t reliant on it.
What we really want is that we don’t have to care about money; that we have enough that we can rely on it always being there.
What God wants is that if we need to rely on money, that we’ll rely on him to provide; that the only value we put on money is in the way it furthers God’s kingdom, and the only Lord we serve is the one in heaven.

Why God?

I had a crap day today. It was especially so because it was very average, not a day where I got stuck on a cliff face, lost in the woods, but a day where things just went bad. I had an exam, the study seemed to go well, but the exam didn’t pay any attention. It asked the things I didn’t know and tripped me up on lots of little mistakes. Not to mention that the day was hot; I had to leave the cool hills in the middle of the day to the hot city, and for an exam at that.
Then I realised that my phone wasn’t working. I rang the help centre to be transferred to an Indian who put me on hold in between asking a question, receiving an answer and then coming back with another question. All that waiting to find out that there was an error and the bank hadn’t transferred the money, so I was overdue on payment with my account suspended and a late fee of more than the phone cap in the first place.
To top it all off I have an essay to write, 4000 words this evening and tomorrow. I found myself asking ‘why?’, and since there was no hope of an answer, I asked ‘why God?’.
Sometimes, I realised, we think that God won’t let anything bad happen to us. We think that as Christians God will put us in a little magic bubble that will only let the good things of the world through and keep out the bad. When things are going well we say to ourselves, ‘God won’t protect us from everything but he’ll stop anything REALLY bad from happening’, and the longer things go well, the higher the expectation of protection.
Jesus never guaranteed to his disciples that they would be free from harm; He just promised them that they would be free. Jesus never promised his disciples happiness; He just promised them everlasting Joy. If God was going to stop anything bad happening to us he would just remove us from the world, but in his grace he has left us in the world, and all that that entails, to give those that are perishing another chance.
I had a really crappy day today. All the things that I did failed and the things I took for granted fell through. But I took God’s grace for granted, and I’m glad my illusions of what his protection looked like fell through, as now I know that what is important IS guaranteed, and what is eternal is promised to us.