God’s gifts last

‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom. Sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor. Provide for yourselves purses that don’t wear out, and save your riches in heaven, where they will never decrease, because no thief can get to them and no moth can destroy them. For your heart will always be where your riches are.’ (verses 32-34)

Read Luke 12:32-48

It seems that Jesus liked to joke with his followers. He told them to sell all they owned and to give the money away to the poor—and then they would be rich forever. But most of them weren’t wealthy to start with. So that was no joke. It sounds, in fact, more like a nasty tease.

Yet we know there was no nastiness in Jesus. No, he was inviting them to work through the paradox in his statement, to solve the apparent conundrum: How can you be rich when you have no wealth?

Jesus gives them and us the solution in what he says in connection with the advice to become rich by giving everything away. Earthly wealth and the influence connected with it, he says, are never permanent possessions. They are under constant threat. But God, he declares, wants us to have the true and lasting riches of heavenly life, peace and joy now and forever. When we believe this promise, then we will be ready to use our earthly possessions for the good of the poor and needy around us.

Heavenly Father, help us to hold tight to the kingdom promises you give us, so that we do not selfishly cling to our earthly possessions. Amen.

by John Vitale, in ‘Guidance for each Day’ (LCA, Openbook, 2002)

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