Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5
“The question is how to go from an absurd life to an obedient life, from a deaf life to a listening life. If you are anxious and nervous and tense and upset, you don’t listen because your anxiety allows you no space to listen. You can’t receive the voice of God that assures us, “You are with me always, and all I have is yours.” Let us try to give time and space to this amazing voice, speaking in our hearts.
Listening is creating the space in which you can hear the voice that says, “You are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter, you are special to me. All that is mine is yours.” The whole Gospel, the whole message of Jesus, is precisely that: “All that is mine is yours. All that I say is for you to hear, all that I know is for you to know, all that I do is for you to do.” Jesus is saying, “Nothing that the Father gave me do I hold back from you.” Really try to listen to that so as to gradually become like Jesus. That is the journey of our adult life.”
Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) in From From Fear To Love: Lenten Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Richmond Hill: The Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust, 1988) 10.
Today’s post has everything to do with generosity because in “the journey of the adult life” people can only hold on to one thing. Will they choose absurdity or obedience? A deaf life or a listening life? The top alternative people cling to instead of Jesus is money. Rather than use it faithfully, they grasp for it absurdly, deaf to everything else.
Some rationalize this behavior as “saving for the future,” ignoring that Jesus describes the person who does that as a “fool” (Luke 12:13-21). Others miss that the call of Jesus to “go and sell” possessions aims not at leaving us as His disciples destitute, but it teaches us to distribute God’s abundant provision. The obedient, listening life discovers Jesus wants us to depend on Him.
Today’s Scripture reminds us that we must keep ourselves free of the thinking that we need money to make it through life. In reality, Christ is all we need. As the week begins perhaps take some time in solitude today to listen to that still small voice that promises to neither leave nor forsake you. Once you hear His voice, do what He says!