Bless me
I am re-reading through Luke in my quiet times right now, partly because my small group is tracking through it in our group discussions and it's been really fascinating. The discussions we've had have motivated me to dig more into the Word and meditate on it.
So - I ran across the parable of the shrewd manager yesterday, and when I was noodling on it thought about what Andy has been talking about in church the past two Sundays. He's been talking about how feeble our American prayers have become, and how we generally pray for things that don't really require God's intervention (like, help me have a safe trip), for God to bless us, and then for a few random sick people. The sarcasm he threw out about our prayers as Americans for God to "bless us" stuck with me, because he's absolutely right that if anyone from any other part of the world heard us pray THAT, they'd probably laugh at us because compared to everyone else we are already SO blessed it's unreal. I mean, a lot of us have expensive coffee habits, houses for our cars (we call them "garages"), and just about all of us get 3 meals a day and live indoors. That's not necessarily a given in other parts of the world, sadly.
So here's this parable that Jesus tells about a dishonest manager who gets caught and whose master fires him and asks him to give an account of his management. He weighs his options, and realizes that he's got a limited amount of time, so he leverages that time and the money he still controls to make friends for himself outside his master's house so that he's not begging when he loses his job. Therefore, he settles his accounts at huge discounts to his masters' creditors so that he can make friends out there, and then is praised (huh?) by his master because he acted shrewdly. Jesus wraps this parable up by saying "I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings." (Luke 16:9) and "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." (Luke 16:13).
What really jumped out at me is this parallel between us and the dishonest manager. We have, by sin, squandered God's gifts to us and God in His grace has given us a little bit of time between when we encounter and receive His offer of grace & a new life and when we have to say "bye, bye" to it and exit stage left from planet earth. Compared to eternity, our lives are probably like the one day that that the servant had after his master pulled a Donald Trump "You're Fired!" on him for this guy to settle accounts. Notice that the servant did not enjoy that one last day and enrich himself in his master's house... he leveraged what was still entrusted to him to enrich his life on the outside. He was thinking of "then" not thinking of "now." In the same way, we have a choice of how to use our time, talent, and treasures in the temporary time we have between now and eternity, and are we using that to enrich our cushy lives here and now or are we using them so that our eternity will be enriched and God's kingdom is expanded? Or in other words, as a child of the King that I am, would I rather drive a BMW here in Atlanta or be welcomed by a swarm of people, that may have never heard of Jesus had I not leveraged those things God entrusted to me, when I see Jesus in Heaven? Sure, a BMW will last about 5 or 6 years, but what is that compared to forever?
My question to myself is, how am I leveraging the things I have (time, talent, stuff) to expose people to the awesomeness of God? And if I'm not, what creature comforts or filler to my margin should I give up so that I can invest more into that? The dishonest manager was welcomed on the other side, and I definitely want to be too :-). Ultimately, that is being blessed.
So - I ran across the parable of the shrewd manager yesterday, and when I was noodling on it thought about what Andy has been talking about in church the past two Sundays. He's been talking about how feeble our American prayers have become, and how we generally pray for things that don't really require God's intervention (like, help me have a safe trip), for God to bless us, and then for a few random sick people. The sarcasm he threw out about our prayers as Americans for God to "bless us" stuck with me, because he's absolutely right that if anyone from any other part of the world heard us pray THAT, they'd probably laugh at us because compared to everyone else we are already SO blessed it's unreal. I mean, a lot of us have expensive coffee habits, houses for our cars (we call them "garages"), and just about all of us get 3 meals a day and live indoors. That's not necessarily a given in other parts of the world, sadly.
So here's this parable that Jesus tells about a dishonest manager who gets caught and whose master fires him and asks him to give an account of his management. He weighs his options, and realizes that he's got a limited amount of time, so he leverages that time and the money he still controls to make friends for himself outside his master's house so that he's not begging when he loses his job. Therefore, he settles his accounts at huge discounts to his masters' creditors so that he can make friends out there, and then is praised (huh?) by his master because he acted shrewdly. Jesus wraps this parable up by saying "I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings." (Luke 16:9) and "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." (Luke 16:13).
What really jumped out at me is this parallel between us and the dishonest manager. We have, by sin, squandered God's gifts to us and God in His grace has given us a little bit of time between when we encounter and receive His offer of grace & a new life and when we have to say "bye, bye" to it and exit stage left from planet earth. Compared to eternity, our lives are probably like the one day that that the servant had after his master pulled a Donald Trump "You're Fired!" on him for this guy to settle accounts. Notice that the servant did not enjoy that one last day and enrich himself in his master's house... he leveraged what was still entrusted to him to enrich his life on the outside. He was thinking of "then" not thinking of "now." In the same way, we have a choice of how to use our time, talent, and treasures in the temporary time we have between now and eternity, and are we using that to enrich our cushy lives here and now or are we using them so that our eternity will be enriched and God's kingdom is expanded? Or in other words, as a child of the King that I am, would I rather drive a BMW here in Atlanta or be welcomed by a swarm of people, that may have never heard of Jesus had I not leveraged those things God entrusted to me, when I see Jesus in Heaven? Sure, a BMW will last about 5 or 6 years, but what is that compared to forever?
My question to myself is, how am I leveraging the things I have (time, talent, stuff) to expose people to the awesomeness of God? And if I'm not, what creature comforts or filler to my margin should I give up so that I can invest more into that? The dishonest manager was welcomed on the other side, and I definitely want to be too :-). Ultimately, that is being blessed.
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