Scotty McLennan

By Scotty McLennan

We're facing hard economic times.  Is there any biblical help available for us?  Job and Jesus are two possibilities. 

Job was touted as the richest of all the people in his time, with seven thousand sheep and three thousand camels.  He loses it all, even though the biblical text tells us he’s a blameless and upright man.  Bad things happen to good people.  His friends come and sit with him in silence for seven days and seven nights, “for they saw that his suffering was very great.”  But then they begin to blame him for his misfortunes, rather than sympathizing with him.    Job comes to curse the day of his birth and cries out against God.  Ultimately, he realizes that wisdom “cannot be gotten for gold” and that those that used to respect him, supposedly, were doing so only because he lived like a king, not because he was considered wise.  After he loses his wealth and power he is widely mocked and scorned.

The perspective he comes to gain is that the universe in which he lives is magnificent in and of itself:  the morning stars sing, the ground puts forth grass, the lightening crackles, the mountain goats give birth, the hawk soars – all without any instigation of his or any other human being’s.  God’s creation can be beheld and appreciated – and it should be -- regardless of human wealth or power. 

My college chaplain used to say that there are two ways to be rich:  “One is to have a lot of money; the other is to have few needs.”  The wise men came to Jesus with great riches, but Jesus was born in a stable and laid in an animals’ feeding trough for a crib.  He grew up a poor carpenter’s son, and then he became an itinerant preacher without possessions.  He preached a message of love -- for family, friends, neighbors, outsiders, the dispossessed and oppressed, and even for enemies.  This is the model Christians have been given for living a truly liberated and fulfilled life.  Wealth, by contrast, can encumber and entrap, and the striving after it can be the most entrapping and encumbering of all.  These days may be the right time to try simplifying, appreciating the beauties of nature, cherishing the love of those around us, and giving it back to others in greater need than ourselves.