Hebrews closes with a rapid-fire series of exhortations and commands that are highly practical and touch many areas of everyday life. It is as if I could stop at any verse and ponder deeply on a fresh word from the Lord.
Reviewing the chapter again I chose verse 5 for my meditation. 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.”
The love of money… the love of things, the love of more, better, newer stuff. Oh, the enticement to love money and the stuff it can buy floods into my life every time I turn on a TV, radio,Internet or open a paper or magazine. Advertisers spend billions to entice you and me to want more, better, newer, bigger. But I cannot blame advertising, all they are doing is scratching an itch I already have. The more I scratch, the more I itch… and the cycle escalates.
Pondering this verse, I find 3 medications for my itch for more… contentment, thankfulness and trust.
Be content, the writer writes. Admittedly this is easier to write than to do. I don’t know that I can will contentment anymore than I can will happiness. But I can cultivate habits that foster the growth of contentment.
I can enjoy what I have and be thankful for what I have. I can purge excess and give it away. By doing so, I exercise my generosity muscles. I can educate myself on the plight of people poorer than myself, as such add doses of reality into my worldview. I can intentionally say ‘no’ to buying some new, better and bigger because I have the means. In so doing, I am exercising my willpower and choosing to be content with what I have. I am sure there are many more things I can do but these are a start.
Be thankful. Oh, the text doesn’t include these words but that’s the underlying word to the reminder that God said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” I can be thankful for what God has given and I can trust that God will watch over me in the future as He has in the past.
I don’t have any allusion that ridding my life of the ‘love of money and the things it can buy’ itch will be easy. But I can be sure, as I work on it, I will be pleasing God.
Lord, I hear Your Word, and I desperately need You help. I know me and I know I struggle here. Send Your help please, I pray. Amen
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