I Want to be Rich

I worked in a restaurant years ago (I'm old enough to say "years ago"!) and just about every Friday night a couple would come in and sit at a table for hours. And pretty regularly, just as they were finishing their meal, the husband would take a stroll around the dining room and find the youngest couple in the place and tell us servers that he's got their bill. The man and his wife remembered what it was like to be young, newly married, perhaps with small kids at home, and even though they weren't dripping with money themselves they knew - odds were - they had more money than the young couple. So without ever saying anything to the young couple, the older couple blessed them in such a cool, tangible way. I LOVED being the server of the young couple and getting to tell them their check had been taken care of!!! But I also loved being the server of the older couple because they generously gave without expectation or pride.

I am tempted to wallow in the "whoa is the world" mentality and blame it all on the rich people because isn't their fault, after all, that we even have poor? Can't they just write a whopper of a check and POOF starvation and homelessness would be wiped out? Not so much. I have step back and remind myself that "... the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils." (1 Timothy 6:10). It doesn't say that money in and of itself is evil.

I want to be a giver of self, and that includes money! But it takes money to give money, no? And I think it's a fine line we walk down, as Mark works his tail off and we dream of "making it big". Vacations or mission trips? Clothes or charity work? Send a child in Uganda to school for a year for less than it costs to send my son to school for a month?... these are the moral dilemmas we toss around. And while some of them are no brainers I think being raised in a society where "my comforts first and then I'll give" is the norm it becomes a discipline to not consider giving a sacrifice, but life. Period.

I don't have to look across the globe to find a family in need either, they are here, in my family, in my church, in my neighborhood, in my everyday life. (Heck, some days I feel like a family in need!) I love thinking globally, but in the last couple of weeks I've been reminded to think locally as well. How quick would I jump to take a child of strangers for weeks or months if their parents needed time - but how quick am I to take a child of a friend just for a few hours?

Or like the other day, I saw part of a forwarded email and one friend was asking another friend, "Is there ANYTHING I can help you with to lessen your load?" I love that!!! I want to be a person who asks people that! (And follows through...)

Oh Sarah, it's always something with you... I realize that. I do. But I can't just sit on this stuff! And I think the more I share the more accountability I have, and the more we can come together and share the love of Christ with people.

"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?" 1 John 3:16-17