“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!
“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Working on Self AwarenessThe evil eye darts about the land just as it did in Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy “Lord of the Ring”. Only in reality that eye often belongs to me. And I struggle to cut it out.
The struggle really is about finding the line between enjoying God’s good creation – and that of humans who express his image by creating wonderful things out of that creation – and making those good things my treasure. I look at my sports car, the two-seater that I use for all my pastoral work, and I treasure it. I love driving that thing. It’s turned hospital visiting into a delight!
While my bedroom furniture was a wedding gift over 28 years ago, and I haven’t drooled at or even desire to by a brand new set (I’m so spiritual!), I’m not sure I haven’t crossed the treasuring earthly things line anyway. I love that bed! We have one of those pillowy tops over the mattress. My pillow is, well, abundantly pillowy. After a long day, or a short day, I treasure my bed.
I am very happy to have the money to afford several luxuries. Now, Bill Gates wouldn’t consider what I own luxuries, and maybe most of you wouldn’t either, but 90% of the world’s 6 billion people would. More important, I would feel bad if my financial situation demanded that I give up what I have come to treasure.
Does Jesus consider me a servant of money because I own these things, more, because I very much want to own and enjoy them? Has my heart become tethered to earthy and temporary realities, and by implication less tethered to heaven, because I would feel bad if my income forced me to eliminate cable TV, to own only my mini-van with its 178 thousand miles, or to never be able to eat out?
I think not. But I cannot confidently (or glibly?) declare I know not. The line between enjoying the earth that is “the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” and possessing an eye primarily for the things of earth such that money becomes my master is awfully thin and sometimes nearly invisible.
Lord of my Life, you do not want me to become a paranoid or guilt-ridden Christian always worried if I cross lines. By the same token, I know you want me to be self-aware and alert enough to detect when my tricky heart (Jeremiah 17:9) slips from enjoying the earth and its fullness to so treasuring it that having the money to by more of it is in danger of becoming my master. Help me to be this self-aware. - Mike Leamon
Plato’s cave
The Greek philosopher Plato described life through the allegory of a cave. Picture a group of people sitting in a cave with their backs to the entrance. The sun is shining through the mouth of the cave casting shadows on the back wall of the cave of everything passing by the cave. The people in the cave have been there so long they have accepted the shadows as reality. They no longer realize what they see is not the real thing. They accept the shadows as reality and refuse to believe there could be anything better than what they perceive as reality.
Plato’s point was that all we perceive through our senses about life is really a shadow of the real thing. (The conversation becomes very ethereal and existential quickly.) If we think about life in terms of Plato’s allegory of the cave and Jesus’ word about our perception of light we realize how deceptive human wisdom can be.
Millions of people in this world think they have discovered the real meaning of life in many things other than Jesus. They pursue this “meaning” with all they have and are, thinking they are pursuing the ultimate purpose of life. In the end they are hopelessly lost when they discover what they thought was light was really darkness. Jesus wants us to know He is the light of the world. He is the only one who can give us a right perspective on life that leads to fullness of life, instead of living among the shadows on the cave wall.
Father of light, guide my life with the light of life. Help me to avoid the tempting shadows that are tying to imitate the real light of the world. I desire to walk in the light each day and to no longer live in the cave. - Dan Jones
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