Saturday, May 30, 2020
All the Gold in the World
Cannot Create God’s Beautiful Creation
Numbers 22:18
Balaam replied to the servants of Balak, ‘Although Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the Lord my God, to do less or more.’
2 Corinthians 2:17
For we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many; but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in his presence.
Words of Grace For Today
Human history is fouled with people using God’s name as a commodity, peddling it for sale, no matter the consequences. Or using it as a hammer to shame, condemn and control others. Or as a means to power.
The world today is built on globalized capitalism. Poor people living in conditions no human should have to endure, put their labour (time and energy and life-force) into the hands of wealthy multinational corporations to produce goods that rich people like us buy at great prices (for us), with the corporations taking more money from our purchase by far than the labourers receive for making the goods.
Everything can be bought and sold for a price. Leonard Cohen wrote that the Holy-Dove is bought and sold again. And while his poetry-words seem to refer to the process of Peace being sold and bought and sacrificed and sold and bought again, it is an image that applies to all that is good in life. Capitalism brings [in-]stability, false security, and irreverent comfort to a few people, while the great majority are kept in poverty, so as to be available for cheap labour, and so as not to consume what the few consider their zero-summed resources that support their comfortable, privileged lives.
It is not hard to write, read, or talk about the injustices in the economic systems of any age. It is dangerous to actually live so as to bring about a bit more justice, a little less injustice in one’s short time on earth.
Balaam speaks clearly to Balak (through his servants): Balaam is not for sale. God’s Word is not for sale. Balaam will not go against God’s Word, no matter the price paid by Balak. Telling power that it is corrupt and one does not and will not participate in that corruption is a good way to meet one’s maker more quickly, with a shorter sojourn on this earth than God may have made available to one otherwise.
Pastor Brian Rude, in El Salvador, reported that they are able to secure food for a few days. You think that your life is complicated a bit by Covid 19 restrictions. There most of the people do not have a secure food supply. They have no food supply, or water supply, or health care at all. Each day they need to venture out to find food, in the city, in the countryside. Most often water and food is there to be found, maybe … maybe enough to not die of starvation or illness from malnutrition. With Covid 19 if you venture out to secure food and water the police arrest you and place you in a quarantined area, which is more a prison than anything else, and the disease and death rates are astronomical. It’s a death sentence, slowly implemented.
What are your Covid 19 restrictions like? How are you coping? Do you have water and food enough, and the ability to secure more when you need them? Do you have the ability to worship as you choose? Do you have people who value you, whom you value, with whom you can speak freely, even if you cannot gather with them, cannot exchange hugs and handshakes, and cannot participate in food preparation and meals together?
Count your daily blessings!
Every challenge that we face (the real ones) is better met when one comes to each day thankful. A grateful heart and mind function better.
And as you meet others who are struggling, remember that you can be in much worse circumstances. The change can come as quickly as a day or less.
So be kind. You may be dependent on others’ kindness much sooner than you ever thought possible.
If you are one who cannot be kind, rather you are compelled to compete for as much as you can get and always demand more than you already have… if you are a greedy, covetous, dangerous, cruel person … well pray that you learn sooner than later, and before it is too late … that we are all in this together.
We are in this Covid 19 pandemic together. We are sojourning on earth as God’s people together.
What you do does come right around to you.
If you think that life is all zero-summed, then eventually that is all you will encounter, after you have ruined so many people it is impossible to count how many. And whether you get ‘enough’ of everyone else’s ‘share’ of what is available in goods, there will be no goodness in life left for you.
If you are kind and sacrificially generous with all that God has given into your care as a steward, then life will continue to be a blessing, and even if/when you do not have enough, or the vagaries of life catch you and you meet your Maker earlier than needed to have been: well every minute of your life will be an ever increasing overflowing abundance of gratitude and generosity. That is what life is about, that is what makes life good and worthwhile. The amount of goods you have and consume is not the measure of your worth, nor of the goodness of your life. Giving (and forgiving) to those in need is the measure of our worth before God.
One who stands in God’s presence, who with sincerity speaks God’s Word for others, will know first how to humbling fear and love God before anything else.
Pray that you are that person who is grateful and generous, and not the person who is greedy and covetous.
Covid 19 makes our choices to be blessed to be a blessing, OR
to greedily take what we can from everyone else
that much more obvious.
Learn, reflect, and grow in Christ.
God’s Wealth is In Light and Grace
Grace is Beyond Compare