Red October
Sunday, 10 October, 2004
October is the month when we invariably run out of money. I think it's because the extra bills come in and sink us really low: car insurance, renewal of NRMA membership, health insurance (which seems to go up every year—why is that?) and the yearly payment for the girl I sponsor in the Philippines. I thought we'd be right for another week or so (we'd better be because we don't get paid for another week or so!) but I checked our bank balance today and we're almost down to our last $100. Bother.
(Please note that we are not starving; Ben's grandmother keeps thinking that we're starving and she sends us a cheque every month that goes towards Ben's AFES wages. Well, she did live through the Depression. I did some grocery shopping on Friday and there's plenty of food in the fridge and $100 is not all the money we have in the world, just the balance of our working account.)
God must have an ironic sense of humour for, as I was going through our bank statements today and working out what financial obligations we'd have in the next fortnight, I happened to be listening to Colin Buchanan's Jesus Rocks the World and I started stressing the most just as he sang,
Do not fear the enemy
Do not fear the poverty
Do not fear eternity
Jesus has conquered them all.
In addition, the project that I am currently procrastinating over is Cash Values for Sunday School—I'm taking Tony Payne's interactive Bible studies, combining it with material from Brian Rosner's Beyond Greed and re-packaging it for my Sunday school kids who are aged 7 to 10. I'm aiming at having 5 weeks' worth of material on the following topics in the following order:
- Money is not God (sin/greed/idolatry/covetousness, etc.)
- God owns all the money (creation/money is good, etc.)
- Money and wisdom (lots of Proverbs passages for this one)
- Money and contentment
- Money and generosity (2 Corinthians 8-9 of course—good thing I've already written an article on it)
One of the best chapters in Brian Rosner's book talks about the concept of limiting oneself for the sake of others:
To limit yourself voluntarily is a modern-day heresy, which, if discovered, is greeted with bemusement if not disbelief. The mortgage lender finds it hard to fathom a customer who does not apply for the maximum loan permitted by the size of his or her annual income. Virtually no-one is satisfied with what he or she has; few willingly forgo what they could afford. “Enough” is always just over the horizon, and the horizon recedes as we approach it. To switch metaphors, so many of us are like the caged hamster running furiously in the wheel and getting nowhere, “trapped in the endless cycle of work and spend, whose poles mutually reinforce each other”. (Mirov Volf, “In the Cage of Vanities: Christian Faith and the Dynamics of Economic Progress”, in Robert Wuthnow [ed.], Rethinking Materialism: Perspectives on the Spiritual Dimension of Economic Behaviour [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995], p. 171.)
...
As odd as it sounds, there is a sense in which God is the contented God. He does not go for everything he can get. We are so used to talking about his infinite knowledge, power and presence that we often forget that in creating and in redeeming us he limited himself in acts of extraordinary self-control. We are not pantheists, believing that God is everything, but theists, holding that God has created and sustains the world but is independent of it. In doing so, the infinite God restricted himself in order to give a measure of freedom to his creatures. Furthermore, he could have gone on creating, but instead stopped after six days.
Likewise, Christ, in becoming a human being, “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7). As Paul explains, “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor” (2 Cor 8:9). Along with praising God for his infinity, then, we do well to remember his humility.
God takes the lead in self-limitation. And in asking us to be content, he is no hypocrite. Since God was willing to limit himself, we should be ready to follow his example. When he calls us to “be content with what you have”, he cannot help but shake his head in disappointment when we steadfastly refuse his advice. We entirely fail to appreciate the point of view from which it was issued. He is not like the medieval baron who expects his serfs to be satisfied with dry bread, while all the time he himself sups on the finest cuisine and has not the faintest inkling of what it means to do without.
Brian Rosner, Beyond Greed, Matthias Media, 2004, pp. 90-92.
Hmm, if we had practised more self-limitation, perhaps we would not be in this mess, almost falling into the red. (Less gelato, methinks.) I always thought that I was pretty good at the money thing but, as Rosner points out, anything can be done in a greedy manner and I can be quite greedy at times.
Nothing beats being convicted by the very material that you're supposed to be teaching to someone else.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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