Money and Goofy Religion Part 7

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6

General fiscal rule #3:  Don’t sweat it.

Y’all know that whole “lilies of the field” thing (Matthew 6:25-34), right? A set of verses so cool that Sydney Poitier lent his talent to a film exploiting the idea.

And you can’t get cooler than Sydney Poitier.

It comes to this: why worry? (Which is different than, “What, me worry?” Smart alecs.)

Worrying about stuff can’t help you.

Doesn’t make you live longer (verse 27) and certainly doesn’t improve your quality of life (verse 26).  

What it can do is distract you from the important stuff.  

As I’m pretty sure that everyone reading this is above the poverty line, so I can safely repeat: what you need, you’ll get.*

As David put in the comments to part six,

“In The Lord's Prayer, Jesus taught us to ask God to "give us our daily bread" -- not bread for the next year, or bread for our lifetime -- just enough bread for today. Tomorrow we can ask for the same.”

For those ready to respond with, “But Sean, wake up! There are people starving every day!”

Yeah, I’m aware of that. But I’m not talking to them. (And I don’t think Jesus was either.)

I’m talking to you.

And I’m talking to me.

(I’m especially talking to me.)

We’ve got enough that if we are worrying, it is not a sign of a physical lack.

Chance are, it's a sign of not-putting-first-things-first lack.

Wow, that was an awkward sentence. Let's get away from that sentence as fast as we can.
 
How about a little perspective?

I just heard a comedian last week tell this story (if anyone out there remembers his name, let me know so I can give him proper credit.).

He was at Universal, watching a man in African robes watching a water fountain.

And the comedian wondered, “How do we explain water fountains to people from Africa?”

It would sound like this:

“You see, we have so much clean, drinkable water here that we just use the excess as decoration.

“And then we take our spare change, the money we have left over after we have bought everything we could possibly want or need, and we throw that extra money into the fountain.

“And then we make a wish for a better life.”

In that light, it seems kinda silly.

So don’t sweat the small stuff - and by small stuff, I mean money.

Instead, put first things first, and the rest will follow.

Final cash principle next time.

Just my thoughts,

Sean

*Put another way, you can’t always get what you want (no!), you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need!