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A Dangerous Blessing By DANIEL
OVERDORF Material wealth is a blessing. This morning I awoke in a warm house. Had a hot breakfast. Sorted through a wardrobe of clothes that wereonce upon a timein style. I jumped in a pick-up truck that I really like and drove to an office filled with shelves of books and a relatively expensive laptop computer. I consider all of these blessings from God. Wealth is a blessing. But it's a dangerous blessing. Last evening I sat down to a pile of bills at the kitchen table. My two-year-old son Peyton, holding a plastic baseball bat and ball, tugged on my arm. "Not now Peyton, I've got to pay the mortgage." How easy it becomes to enjoy a house but neglect the family inside it. Clothes, cars, laptops, vacationsthose things God intends us to enjoy somehow, perhaps without our even noticing, transition from blessings to distractions, from enjoyment to entrapment. Jesus said it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter His Kingdom. Does that mean it's impossible? No, with God all things are possible. Yet there's something about money and possessions that make us particularly vulnerable to certain spiritual diseasespride, selfishness, coveting, and greed. How can we enjoy God's material blessings without falling into Satan's traps? The answer may surprise you. It involves a new pair of glasses. You see, we've got a vision problem. Material possessions have blurred our perspectives and skewed our priorities. We've come to equate our worth with our wealth. We think life is money, and money is life. Try this lens instead, one provided by Jesus: Your life does not consist in the abundance of your possessions (Luke 12:15). There's more to you than the balance of your checking account. There's more to life than the size of your 401K. Your worth isn't measured in the square footage of your house or in the horsepower of your sedan. You have infinite worth just because you're you. God created you, gave His Son to save you, and desires an eternal relationship with you. Material wealth? It's a blessing. If you've got it, enjoy it. Use it in a wise, godly manner. But be careful. When viewed through the wrong lens, it's a dangerous blessing. The story's told of a man who opened a newspaper and discovered it was dated six months into the future. It contained stories of events that would take place six months later. The sports page listed scores of games that hadn't yet been played. The financial page revealed the future rise and fall of various stocks and bonds. This could make him a wealthy man. A few large bets on underdog teams would make him rich. Investments in the right stocks would fatten his portfolio. A smile crossed his lips. He kept leafing through the newspaper until he came across the obituaries. There he found a picture of himself. Who cares about wealth when you know you're going to die? Then again, we do know that, don't we? We are mortal. Life is brief. And when life ends all the material wealth we've accumulated will be meaningless. We'll learn then, if we haven't learned before: Life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions. Daniel Overdorf is the Sr. Minister of Fayetteville Christian Church, located at New Hope and Hickory Roads in Fayetteville. He may be heard each Sunday at 10:30 a.m. as a part of the church's weekly worship. Daniel may be contacted at the church office770-461-8763, or at fayettevillechristian@juno.com
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