It doesn’t matter if it’s the rich or the poor – I have seen families torn apart and destroyed overquestions of inheritance. As if they believed that the precious relationships of their life were less valuable than the baubles which helped to hold them together!
In cash terms, all of us, no matter who we are – how young or how old – try to juggle many ‘financial’ balls. A job I love, or a job that pays well. Can I have both? Rare. Now I’m working with people I don’t like, but the money is good so I’ll endure. My boss is awful, nothing is worth having to face that one every working day. And so it goes on, with the great question, when will we ever have enough – too much would be better – to live the life we want.
Then…. Jesus sent His disciples, without cloak or coin, His word their only possession, like troubadours with a single song. They broke over Galilee like a summer storm, cleansing air and earth and leaving a fragrance as fresh as the time before the first scream. They came back to Him, having broken the back of pain and He said, ‘Come aside and rest awhile’.
So, Jesus pulled them away to a desert place where they reclined on the green grass of His soul. “We have done great things,” they said. ‘Your feet are dusty, I willwash them,’ He said. “We will have a time of no more hunger, no more thirst,’ they said. Jesus said to them, “People who would end hunger may be hungry themselves. Here is Bread. People who would do away with thirst may bethirsty themselves. Here iswine. Eat and remember or the earth you shake will swallow you. The mountains you move will crush you. The sin you stalk will in turn stalk you”.
Then Jesus opened his hands and a story fell live to the ground. ‘Once there was a rich man and the over-generous earth opened to him with the gift of 1000 suppers of wheat. At the sight of such abundance his mind became a ledger and he broke down his bins and built bigger barns to house his new self-sufficiency. I will never be hungry again – he shouted. He never was. That night he died.
Eat and Remember! (Adapted from John Shea, The Indiscriminate Host)
