I have good news for you, brothers and sisters in Christ.  You are incredibly rich.

This struck me as I was contemplating this post, and how to frame what the Lord’s been showing me about the love of money.  I had an epiphany, in which I realized that the problem is not that we live too well, but that we live far too poorly.  We live sometimes yearning for gold and silver, which at home, is the stuff the streets are made of.  We fork over the cash for more space, but at home there are “many mansions.”  We seek comfort and respite in every possible conceivable way (speaking to Americans, particularly, here), but at home, every tear is wiped away and we have fullness of joy.

When I was growing up in the middle of Chicago, there was something that my mom and dad would try to gently communicate from time to time:  “You’re not from here.”  They’d say it sometimes when we were passing the liquor stores and laundromats that made up the landscape, or when we spoke like our bilingual friends without the excuse of actually speaking another language, or when our bikes were stolen…again.

So they’d try to tell us about where they had grown up, and that we were born by the ocean.  About spending leisure time in mountains instead of on video games, and about the fog rolling off the bay.  About how there are places in the world that aren’t ugly.

They would sigh and say, “We never meant to raise you kids in the city.  You aren’t from here, you know.”  Once I was old enough to catch on, I got a little angry.  So, where “we’re from,” people are well-off, well-educated, and live in beautiful natural surroundings?  What the heck are we doing here?  Our cousins go to tennis camps…for MONTHS!  We kick around half-deflated dodgeballs a couple times a week in “gym.”  HELLLOOOOOO????  Who derailed our lives?  Why aren’t we AT where we’re FROM?

But the reason was because Jesus Christ had rescued my parents from eternal death, and slavery to sin.  They had not found salvation in being comfortably mid to upper class, or in education, or in nature.  They found it in Him.  So they didn’t make their life choices based on “what would be best for the kids.”  They obeyed the Lord, and let Him give us what would be best.  How He’s rewarded that would take a million blogs to describe…how lavishly the Lord has blessed us.  But that’s for another time.

The love of money in Christians shows up like it did in me in my youth:  having no revelation that WE’RE NOT FROM HERE and assimilating, deciding that these few minutes on the earth should feel more like home.  But it’s not home.  Our home is in heaven.  The description is not merely granite countertops and crown moulding.  The description is MAJESTY AND GLORY.  The whole earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.  We are so stinking rich!!!  All the wealth of the universe belongs to our Father!

Well, you ask, why aren’t we AT where we’re FROM?  Why don’t I have my wealth?

1 Peter 2:11 Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul…

You’re a stranger here; it’s not like home.  The lowly, measly wealth that this world, under its current administration (Satan–2 Cor. 4:4), has to offer is…money.  Not even real.  For Americans, not even pretending to be real by being held to any standard (e.g. the gold standard).  A number printed on a paper, that acquires us more stuff.  It’s not real.  We’re supposed to see through it, to despise it.  To be wholly UN-mastered by it.  But to master it.

I think of that scene from Schindler’s List towards the end, when Schindler realizes that his ring might have bought him another life.  When he finally understands what was valuable.

From my vantage point, it is obvious that many American Christians will give their energy and focus to the love of money, decorating their prison cell (that is life under the oppression of the god of this age, when sin is rampant and the devil prowls about like a roaring lion), unable to even hear the instructions to let the other prisoners know about the escape plan.

We have a few quick minutes on the earth before eternity with the One we love.  There’s an aspect of misery, dragging around this body of death, and not seeing Him face to face.  The temptation is to comfort, comfort, comfort ourselves…encourage each other to take a load off…buy some more…bigger, better…  But for these few tiny minutes out of eternity that we have to endure being far from our Lord and lover, we are here to rescue as many as we can from eternity totally separated from Him.

Let’s just not love money.  Let’s spend our few minutes on souls, spend our money on souls, spend our energy on souls.  There will be AGES, AEONS, and EPOCHS to enjoy our wealth.  Won’t we laugh at the little funny-faced bills then, with all the congregation that followed us through the gates into eternal life?

Let’s hear Him saying, “You’re not from here, you know.”