Preparatory Prayer:
"Convert us, 0 God, and show us Thy face and we shall be saved." Psalm 79.
Setting:
Early morning, filled with sunshine. Jesus, in His long white flowing garment, has climbed up the slope of a hill and seated Himself before a huge audience who have come to listen to His words. Everything is unhurried; He lets them have all the time they need to select each the position he wants for himself. So they range themselves round about Him, each one conscious of His gaze as though there was nobody else here, each one waiting eagerly for the moment when He will begin to speak. "Never did man speak as this Man." What would His theme be this morning? What is it going to be here in my place of prayer? I find a vacant spot just at His feet. Here let me settle myself; kneeling with hands joined and eyes turned towards Him, here let me pray. "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth."
Fruit:
To estimate poverty and riches as Our Lord estimates them.
1. If an entry of the birth of Christ had been made in the city register it would read: "Born on the side of the road, of a strangerwoman said to come from Nazareth, a Man Child named Jesus Christ." If an account of His funeral had been written up, the reporter would say: "He was only a pauper. He did not have enough money to defray the expenses of His funeral, so a charitable man allowed Him into a grave gratis." While He was at Nazareth He passed for the Son of a poor artisan. During His public life, He Himself declared that, while birds had nests and foxes their lairs, He had nowhere to rest His head. So we might describe Him as a Man of no fixed abode, a vagrant.
Yet He was God and all the universe was His.
When He began to speak on the mountainside, the first words to come from His lips were in praise of poverty. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." When a rich young man presented himself and asked to be allowed to follow Him, he was told that he must first of all give his money to the poor. He could not summon up the courage to do so. He went away sad, and Jesus exclaimed: "How hardly shall a rich man enter heaven! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go into heaven!" When a poor widow threw her small alms, all she could afford, into the almsbox, Jesus assured those who were watching that she had given more than those who had been ostensibly more generous.
Jesus cried out: "Woe to you who are rich!" Jesus told more than one parable to illustrate the danger of riches - of the rich man who died and was buried in hell; of the rich man who was "a fool" because in the midst of his abundance he forgot all about his soul. Jesus warned those who would come with Him "not to possess gold nor silver in your purses, nor script for your journey nor two coats nor shoes nor a staff."
One often enough hears the complaint that we who profess ourselves close followers of Christ have discarded almost entirely this uncomfortable section of His teaching. It is clear that He would have us cultivate a fear of abundance, whereas the world in which we live respects a man and assesses his worth by the size of his banking account.
Avarice, grips the soul with bands of steel. The man enslaved by love of riches is like a person afflicted with dropsy: the more he drinks, the more his thirst increases. He has been compared to Tantalus, who, immersed to the lips in cold water was still tortured with insatiable thirst. Love of money dries up the heart and saps and hardens and coarsens the soul. Other passions very often lessen in old age, but the slave of riches would wish to drag his money with him into the coffin. Through avarice Jesus was sold by Judas and through the same vice many a soul is sold to Satan. Our Lord compares wealth to thorns that choke the growth of good seed, because the man who loves money sets up in his heart a god which will not have other gods before it.
The possession of money engenders anxiety, endless worries, keen disappointment, jealousy, pride, not seldom a complete loss of one's sense of justice.
Lord, it is so easy to forget, at least in practice, what Your words and example teach so insistently concerning riches. Many men invest riches with an imaginary importance which they do not in fact possess. When shall I begin to see this? To learn to be satisfied with less rather than more, to shun undue anxiety about treasure that must soon slip out of my hands? Here in my prayer, open my eyes, for the glitter of money has dulled my powers of perception.