Your Money or Your Life: I

Introduction

This week I was arrested by the City Council for contravening one of its rules. I was arrested for disposing off storm water onto the street – where else does one send it when all Nairobi is one big pool.

 

This was a case of my money or my life. My life here may not have meant that I was in any physical danger. It was the fact that I was going to experience some discomfort, most likely by spending a substantial amount of time with vegetables and other evidence.

 

When people ask us, “your money or your life” we pretty much know the answer. For many it is their life. We are well versed with the drill if a robber or carjacker comes for your money or your car. Nothing is worth your life. But when we come to God asking us that question, it gets technical. Do we even think about it? Do we ever hear God asking us that question?

 

Read Luke 12: 13 – 21

–       A man asks Jesus to help him with the issue of his inheritance, which is a fair question. But Jesus does not want to get involved with this case – it can get messy leading to loss of life. Instead He proceeds to issue a warning to everybody about greed – watch out. And He proceeds to tell the parable about the rich man who just got richer and made plans with his riches.

–       To be honest, the man was right in making this move to expand his barns and store more – indeed for many years he was set, as we like to say here in Kenya. He was set. But it is with that statement that the Lord checks in and calls him a fool. And His life was taken away that very day

 

Why was a very hard working and determined man who did everything taken away by God? What was so foolish about Him that He was not even allowed answering the question, “Your life or your money?”

 

The Concept of the Seed and Surplus

I suggest that this man had been brilliant all along until he said to himself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry”.  Is that wrong. My wife and I often dream of life in good retirement. But those are often just dreams – a time when we neither have to toil so much for so little. But those are only dreams. We then downgrade our dreams to each of our children being something greater than us and hope they will remember us. But those are still just dreams. For this man it was a dream come true. The wind had blown in his direction – bringing him much prosperity. Why should he not enjoy it?

 

It is because His life suddenly now consisted of the abundance of his possessions. I have enough grain, surplus for many years. Let me now eat, drink and be merry. He forgot that even in the midst of surplus, there is a seed. In the midst of surplus, there is a seed, and that seed needs to be planted so that it continues to bear fruit. In the mentality of this man, he had arrived, and to arrive now was to lay back and enjoy the riches and drink and eat them away for the rest of his life. He was not thinking about making more. His life consisted in the abundance of His possessions. Whenever God gives us surplus, there is still a seed that he wants you to sow – so that you can be responsible with what He has given you and multiply what He has given you.

 

But I hear some of you questioning the morality of making more yet he already had so much. Is that not extra greed and against what God was saying. Wasn’t this man right in saying that I have worked and toiled enough. Enough is the right word here. Didn’t he have enough and was that not good judgement. And that is where the problem is? Enough ended with him. Enough was as they say for me myself and I. He was not thinking about making more so that even others could benefit. It was all about himself. God gives us seed and out of that seed comes surplus. In that surplus there is an expectation that it will be planted again for more fruit. If one has no LIFE thinking about money and resources, it is the point at which they say, “You have plenty laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry”. We have to go back to the words of Jesus that life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions. And he warns us to be on guard about all kinds of greed. And the best way to deal with surplus without greed is to plant it again so that it can be used far beyond you. But once again, this can only happen at the point one realises that what they have is not their own, as this man thought. What we have belongs to the Lord. As Psalm 24:1 says. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. The world and all who dwell in it”