There is something in all of us that wants to justify everything that we do. Just recently I heard that a survey had shown that what most people think will make them happy is more money. However, the research suggests that money is not what actually does make people happy. I wonder if the idea of lots of money (or possessions) making us happy is an attempt to justify all the effort that we put in to try and get it.
I’m not against work, even hard work, in fact I believe that satisfying work is a great help in being happy, but we seem to spend nearly all of our time trying to earn more of it. It seems it really is money that makes the world work for us. Government, business, leisure, health, science, maybe even religion, seems to only work because of money. Without money we would be stuck for how to make things work.
Yet it isn’t money that really makes us happy. Perhaps we claim it is because the admit that money is not important would be to admit that all the effort we put in trying to get a good job and all the hours we worked to try and get more money, and all the time we spent trying to earn enough to treat our children, would turn out to be wasted time. Maybe we would start to think that our lives have actually been about nothing. So we persuade ourselves that more money is what we need for happiness.
I think Jesus wanted to break this idea. Money can be useful but it is not what we should worship. We worship what we think about the most and what we spend most time on. How many of us spend most of our time either earning or spending money? What is your life built on?
I encourage you to try and think a little more outside the box and put money in its proper place.