Archives by: Gary Hoag

“The Christian life does not consist in going to church and keeping the commandments, and so getting to heaven because of faithfulness to certain forms; it means that “life is a trust, a stewardship.” That was our Lord’s idea of being faithful, an idea we have pitifully narrowed. He did not talk of being faithful to creed or commandment, but of being faithful to what has been committed to us. Life is not a probation which ends in reward or punishment in another world; it is a power and a possession which we are to use. God has made us working partners in his plan for the world. The New Testament word is “Stewardship.” The modern word would be “partnership” or “trusteeship.”

Stewardship has many sides. There Is the stewardship of time, which demands that one’s time be so used that it shall count most for God’s great end. The stewardship of business requires justice and love for men in the shop and on the street; it asks how we are making our money. The stewardship of money also concerns the spending of money. In the Christian use of money, the fundamental fact is not tithing but stewardship.”

E.W. Mathews in Woman’s Home Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Volumes 37-38, February 1920, 49.

“The major characteristic of God’s world is the fact that in it everything is given freely.”

Jacques Ellul in Money and Power.

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Matthew 6:24

“Mammon is a genuine rival to God. The recurring biblical demand confronts us: “You shall not worship the work of your hands.”

At least three things follow from this view. First, this position confronts people with a decisive choice. Jesus challenged his hearers to choose one master or another—God or Mammon. Either we serve God and use money or we serve money and use God. Ultimately we follow what we have loved most intensely to its natural destination—eternity or death—“for where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.”

Second, money can never be treated as a purely economic issue. It is always a spiritual and moral issue first. Precisely to pretend that money is neutral and simply a medium of exchange is to leave ourselves vulnerable to its power as something more—an idol to which we can become enslaved.

Third, there are two roads toward slavery to money. The poor person’s road is via the confusion of need with entitlement, which leads to dependency; the rich person’s road is via the confusion of need with desire, which leads to the drivenness of insatiability.

…these explanations of the problem of money have direct implications for giving…

For those of us who see the problem of money as excess, we are to give to get rid of surplus wealth.

For those of us who see the problem of money as idolatry, we are partly to give because in giving freely we decisively repudiate the power of money. But [these are] secondary, not a primary motive. As the New Testament puts it, “The Lord loves a cheerful giver.”

In other words, God loves a person so freed from the grip of Mammon as to thumb his or her nose at it and thus to give it with a carefree abandon that is oblivious of its hold.”

Os Guinness in Doing Well and Doing Good: Money, Giving and Caring in a Free Society (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2001) 79-80.

Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.” 2 Corinthians 9:13-15 (cf. Exodus 16:18)

“Money will become the bond of union that binds the Christians of Jerusalem and of Corinth into one. They are one as much as Israel was one people. As in their ingathering of the manna the feeble and the strong were to bring all into one store that all might share alike, so in the body of Christ. God allows riches and poverty. God bestows His gifts with apparently unequal hand that our love may have the high privilege of restoring the equality. The want of some calls us to the love and the help and the blessedness of giving to others. And at another time, or in different spheres, the very ones who needed help may, in their turn, out of abundance bless their helpers. Everything has been so ordered that love shall have room to work, and that there shall be opportunity to cultivate and to prove the Christlike spirit.”

Andrew Murray (1828-1917) in Christ’s Perspective on the Use and Abuse of Money (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1978) 45.

Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. Luke 21:34

“Jesus warns his disciples of being distracted or controlled by the anxieties of daily life. If these things hold our attention, then we are not ready for the ways Jesus comes into our lives. We miss opportunities to be quiet and pray; opportunities to reach out and help someone in need. We can get so focused on our own needs that we fail to see and respond to the needs of others. Do I allow myself to get overly anxious about the challenges of daily life or do I surrender all to the One who provides strength for all situations?”

Fr. Bill Adams, C.Ss.R. taken from Your Daily Spiritual Reflection: November 26, 2011 on Luke 21:34-36 from The Redemptorists of the Denver Province.

“Heavenly Father

We first and foremost thank you for the provision to be able to buy gifts during a time when the world’s economy is still in recovery mode.

But as we thank you for this provision, we also ask for knowledge, wisdom, and discernment so that we can be good stewards over the financial resources you have given us.

Do not let us exceed our budgets but let us stay within our budgets remembering that beyond the sales, on the other side, are people who could really use the money we would spend on gifts. Let us remember that our wants represent someone else’s needs.

Do not let the spirit of greed and consumption overtake us on this day. Let us remember that the Christmas season is not about buying things and receiving things as much as it is about spreading love and reminding people of the great love that came to the earth for us. May that same love extend on this day.

May we exercise patience in long lines; kindness in crowds and may traveling mercies be extending to us in traffic. Grant everyone safety throughout the day and beyond.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”

N. Symmonds beliefnet blogpost entitled “A Black Friday Prayer” on November 26, 2009 at: http://blog.beliefnet.com/prayerplainandsimple/2009/11/a-black-friday-prayer.html

“Gratitude and thanksgiving are central motifs in the New Testament writings of the apostle Paul. Paul begins nearly every letter with expressions of thanks to whomever he is writing. There is also a strong imperative component of gratitude in Paul’s letters where the phrases be thankful or give thanks occur multiple times in multiple contexts. Christians are called on to live lives of thanksgiving as a glad acknowledgement of God’s generosity, which then provides a model for how Christians are to deal with each other.”

Robert A. Emmons in Thanks!: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007) 98.

“Lord, keep us from following the gods of pride, stubbornness, vanity, sloth, greed and comfort that beckon for our allegiance every day. You brought us through the night watches, you who neither slumber nor sleep. We pray to follow you along the path of generosity, humility, and love throughout the day. Amen.”

Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Enuma Okoro, editors of Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Radicals (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010) 522.

Hildegard entreats her readers to give to the poor, to divide those material things that “you hold in your bosom and embrace in your heart.” She says, “Let your heart’s goodwill overflow, so that you will not be among the lost sheep [cf. Matthew 25:31-46], sanctify yourself before God by giving of your substance to refresh those in want, and God will give you his mercy in your misery.”

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) as recounted in Passionate Spirituality ed. Elizabeth A. Dreyer (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005) 92, cf. II.6.89.

“Almighty and everlasting God, which art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving unto us that our prayer dare not presume to ask, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of English Reformation. This excerpt is “The Collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity” in The Collects of Thomas Cranmer ed. C. Frederick Berbee, Paul F.M. Zahl (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) 92.