Sunday, June 27

Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you.”
—Hebrews 13:5

It’s not so much that we love money, but that we love what money can buy for us, get for us, achieve for us. We’re constantly searching for something that will create within us a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment.

Sometimes we think it’s the possessions that money can buy that will give us that satisfaction. Sometimes we think that the money we spend on vacations will give us a respite from the stress and struggle of our lives. Or we think money can buy us the prestige and honor that will give us an edge in life.

By always looking for satisfaction and fulfillment outside ourselves, we lose sight of the possibility for contentment in the here and now. We mistakenly think that if we escape what is, contentment will descend on us like a soft feather cloud. 

Yet it is not escape into something else that leads us to that space of satisfaction and fulfillment. It is accepting what is, and knowing that in the midst of what is, we are not alone. When we can set aside our desire for what money can buy us, we have the possibility of discovering the buried treasure of God’s great presence that is just waiting to be uncovered by the hungry fingers of our soul.

O God, let me find in your presence that stillness and contentment that feeds my soul as surely as the sun feeds young flowers just beginning to bloom.

These Signposts originally appeared on explorefaith in 2003.