A man returning from a short term mission trip to Haiti said, “It made me realize how incredibly blessed I am”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I have heard similar things from others. It’s a common reaction to visiting the third world.<\/p>\n\n\n
But it misses the mark.<\/p>\n\n\n
I would have no problem hearing, “I realized how wealthy<\/b><\/i>\u00a0I am.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“How comfortable<\/i><\/b>\u00a0I am.”<\/p>\n\n\n
“How much\u00a0security<\/b><\/i>\u00a0I have.”<\/p>\n\n\n
In fact, every one of those insights would be worthy of applause even. Perhaps these are what the man meant to say.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But when we say “how blessed we are here in the U.S.”, our language reveals a misguided and unbiblical feeling in our gut: that material wealth is a sign of God’s favor.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Here are two major points about wealth and poverty we must always keep in mind:<\/p>\n\n\n
1) Material wealth can be as much a curse as a blessing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Jesus said, “How difficult it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven”!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0And he asked, “What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
2) There is more than one way to be poor.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Americans, with our abundance of possessions, tend to be poor in relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0And since the Bible frames the whole meaning of life in terms of relationship – “Love God with all you’ve got and love your neighbor too” – to be poor relationally is more dire than being poor materially.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The sweet spot would be to become rich both financially AND relationally. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n
(Of course, if you truly hit that sweet spot, most of those financial riches would be funneled toward the many people you care deeply about, close to home and around the world.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A man returning from a short term mission trip to Haiti said, “It made me realize how incredibly blessed I am”.\u00a0 I have heard similar things from others. It’s a common reaction to visiting the third world. But it misses the mark. I would have no problem hearing, “I realized how wealthy\u00a0I am.”\u00a0 “How comfortable\u00a0I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6117,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions\/6117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}