Spend Yourself
Dave Faust
Recently my wife took our granddaughters to one of those stores where everything costs a dollar or less. The girls were delighted when Candy told them, "You can buy anything you want in the whole store—one item—but once you spend your dollar, it's gone!" The four-year-old decided on an orange plastic trumpet that plays one note, and the two-year-old bought a stuffed purple bunny. Everyone was happy with the purchases—except perhaps the parents who now have to listen to a tooting trumpet hour after hour.
It's not too soon for our granddaughters to start making wise choices. Life is an investment opportunity. All of us get to decide how to spend the currency we've been given, and then we must live with the consequences of our decisions.
When God created Adam and Eve, he blessed them with a divinely-orchestrated blend of life, liberty, and responsibility. He put them into a garden filled with animals and plants to supervise and enjoy. He gave them wide-ranging freedom, but he also made the boundaries clear: "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die" (Genesis 2:16, 17). Despite all the blessings they already enjoyed, Adam and Eve stepped outside their God-given boundary, purchasing death for the price of a short-lived taste of forbidden fruit.
The Lord asked through the prophet Isaiah, "Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?" (Isaiah 55:2). Why, indeed? Why devote our lives to pleasures, passions, and possessions that fade away with the passing of time?
Worldly possessions will no more satisfy an empty soul than saltwater will quench thirst. Sooner or later we all must confront the hard truth an Old Testament preacher discovered 3,000 years ago. Without God, everything is "meaningless, a chasing after the wind" (Ecclesiastes 1:14).
Doesn't it make sense to spend our resources on things that will last forever? Shouldn't our main goal in life be to serve God and others?
Here's what Isaiah recommended: "If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday" (Isaiah 58:10).
The apostle Paul told his Christian brothers and sisters, "I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well" (2 Corinthians 12:15). He spent his life furthering the kingdom of God.
When America's Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they concluded with a firm commitment: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." These brave men laid down their reputations and their fortunes so we could enjoy the blessings of liberty.
We are free to invest our lives any way we want. To honor our Founding Fathers—and to honor our heavenly Father—let's spend wisely.
This column first appeared in The Lookout on Jul 1, 2007.
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