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The Source of Our Blessings

In our Sunday School class yesterday, we had a good discussion on James 5:1-6. If you don’t know the passage, it is about a warning to those who are rich. For many of us in Canada, we don’t realize how well off we are. Yet, in spite of our affluence, we complain more about what we don’t have rather than be thankful for what we do.

I think our Western culture seems to live with this attitude of entitlement – I deserve everything I can get! It is very easy for us to feel this way, particularly in this society. Even Christians are not immune, pastors included. I know it is easy for us to say, “What I own, I have gained from my own hard work – at least, I’ve worked harder than these folks over there! But the danger is we can become wrapped up in all we own or have achieved.

Well, let’s ask this question: Do we deserve what we have? I want to first ask that question completely from a secular point of view – this is something that economists like to study: to what extent is wealth and income the result of the effort, the hard work of those who own it?

Even from a secular perspective the answer to that question is, “only to a small extent.” It is true that the person who is a diligent worker, who is wise in making investments, who is saving regularly is likely on average to have more than the person who is the opposite in all those ways. However, there are many, many “accidents” or circumstances that lead one person to have more than another.

There are factors such as where you were born, the family you were born into, even the colour of your skin – none of which are of your own doing. Some of the hardest working people in the world, and some of the people who have made the wisest investments, are people who have the least income. They invest in their local economies and in each other, but they have had no opportunity to get any more than that because of where they were born, the resources that they inherited, and the policies of their governments or restrictions of their culture.

I think all of us today in our nation is rich, by some important definition of the word and by comparing ourselves to others. All of us, I am quite confident, are in the top 15% of the income distribution of the world, so most people are much poorer than we are.

On the other hand, I doubt that all of us here are in the top 15% of the most diligent in the world. So I don’t think there is much of a relationship between diligence, hard work, and income. So even from a secular perspective, we do not deserve what we have – a lot of what we have is ours because of these accidents, because of chance (from a secular perspective).

But what about the biblical perspective? From a biblical perspective we do not deserve what we have AT ALL! In 1 Chronicles 29, King David’s prayer for Solomon at his commissioning displays this. In it, he talks about the money they have raised to give to God for the building of the Temple. David says, “Wealth and honour come from you, Lord.” He saw God as the Source of their wealth and status!

Deuteronomy 8:17-18 takes this a step further. “You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth…” Again, God is seen as the Source.

So what God is saying here is even if what we have is the result of our hard work, that hard work itself is a gift of God. Our ability to do hard work is a gift of God.

So who we and what we have are not our’s solely on our own efforts and accomplishments. With that being said, our status and worth then does not depend on our income or the amount of toys we have. All these things are ultimately a blessing from the Lord.

In the end, although we do not deserve whatever we have, for what we do have, we need to acknowledge the true Source from where they came. James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

So let us praise and thank God for those blessings He does bestow and may we use them to honour and glorify Him.

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