THE QUESTION LINGERS

Every now and then I pick up a book I read long ago and begin to flip through the pages. It's interesting seeing what notes I wrote in the margins or what questions I scribbled at the bottom of the page.

This afternoon I picked up Richard Foster's book from 1985, Money, Sex & Power: The Challenge of the Disciplined Life. The pages are now yellow at the edges, and I can hear the back of the book creak as I turn the pages. The question Foster asks on page 42 "sticks" now the same way it did long ago when I worked through the book with a group of friends.

Foster points out that the Biblical witness says God owns all things. Everything we have belongs to God. We have it to use for awhile, not just for ourselves but to bless others. The Bible says a portion of the harvest is to be given to the poor (Deuteronomy 14:28-29). Every fiftieth year the economic order was turned upside down during the Jubilee as all debts were forgiven. The land is mine, says God. So the house we live in is God's house, the car we drive is God's car, and the garden we plant is God's garden. Everything reminds us of God.

God's ownership of everything...changes the kind of question we ask in giving, Foster writes. Rather than, "How much of my money should I give to God?" we learn to ask, "How much of God's money should I keep for myself?"

How we ask the question changes how we see "our" money, "our" stuff, and how we give, doesn't it?

How is it that during a children's sermon, when the children are told God gives $1 to us and only asks that we return 10 cents, we smile and the lesson makes perfect sense, but when we look at applying that very same lesson to the income we receive of $25,000 or $50,000 or $145,000 the ten percent looks outrageously large? Why do we smile and nod at the perfect rightness of the lesson of the dollar, but we struggle so to live out the lesson with our resources as adults?

The pages of the book are yellow and brittle, but the question lingers: "How much of God's money should I keep for myself?"

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Join us in worship this Sunday as we again are blessed by great music, as we rejoice in the grace of God with the Lord's Supper, as we explore how God can help change the way we view tough times ("Adding Muscle"), and as we celebrate those saints who have died during the past year.

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark Fenstermacher
Lead Pastor