Is this the best you can hope for; pleasure and wealth?

Is this the best you can hope for; pleasure and wealth?

A perfect example of the desire too many people look for in this world of selfishness and getting ahead.  Now, there is nothing wrong with working to provide the best we are able to have, especially when making a good home for our families.  Certainly our Lord was very good friends with the family of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  (Jn 12: 1 ff).  Bethany was a small town just outside Jerusalem and became a comfortable place for Jesus and his disciples to stop often.  The obvious criterion was that Jesus and his friends had a home to rest a while as they continued their mission around the county-side.  But, it was a home that had to be from the sweat of the owners.  So working for and building a place to live is an apparent requirement for all that will fulfill their family needs. 

Now, we must put on our best thoughts of what is necessary for life and what is just a manner of gaining the gold that sometimes creates pride as in, “See if you can gain the same thing, or I am better than you,”  How easy it has become to accumulate earthly treasures and a sense of ownership that others may try to emulate, but fail because of lesser ability or not inheriting lots of money.  If any of us is fortunate to live in a family that has money or prestige, it should never become one of lording it over those with less. 

The point here reminds all of us that there is more to life than reaping in treasures and hoarding it for no one.  Of course, I am not promoting a socialist society that means give everything away.  What I am saying is that those of us who have been given opportunities that many in our community do not have, we must take some of the fruit that has fallen from the trees to lie so the poor can pick up the fruit on the ground.  “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not be so thorough that you reap the field to its very edge, nor shall you glean the stray ears of the grain.  These things you shall leave for the poor and the alien.  I, the Lord, am your God.”  (Lv 23: 22).  

Words from the past from God do not always fade into history because we may not be gathering grain that has fallen.  Really!  The rich man and Lazarus should strike a note of understanding when it comes to even not recognizing the poor that block our sidewalk as we enjoy our wealth.  (Lk 16: 19 - 31).  Make certain you are not careful so as to trip around someone, even listless relatives who do not work, as you  put on blinders in order to avoid eye-contact with them.   The rich man couldn’t avoid seeing the poverty stricken beggar, but getting around him became a challenge.  He saw him, but his needs were always within his presence and once in eternity he realized the obvious neglect of his selfishness corrupted his soul.

These also are the crippled, from any number of reasons, who may be closer to us than we can imagine.  We may want to tell them to quit moaning and go to work for their money.  They might just be your own children who have fallen away from life and you might just be the one the Holy Spirit is speaking to in order to help pick them up from the gutter.  

Ralph B. Hathaway