Money Matters

Prayer meeting was a bit of a frightening experience for me this week.

We started a new series in which we hope to look at issues relating to money management. The inspiration for this series comes from Rob Parson's little book, The Money Secret. Our plan is to do a systematic study of the chapters in the book.

The first chapter of this book introduces us to a character who is at the verge of taking her own life because of her sense of failure and isolation that came from poor money management. When I had read the book initially I had identified with the strong emotions that money problems can bring into a person's life. Little did I anticipate that reading this chapter in a group, would lead to such a deep feeling of communal depression! 

As we shared our thoughts and experiences with each other it became abundantly clear how relevant the topic of money is in our lives. This is a topic that we usually keep to ourselves and our own families when we try to make a budget work. The fact that it is private, increases the feelings of fear and personal shame that a person experience when one has made some mistakes and find oneself in an ever tightening knot.

Our prayer at the end of the evening had serious overtones. We all felt a strong yearning for the presence of God in our difficulties. We made several pleas for comfort an freedom.

I left the meeting with the beginning of three thoughts in my mind:

1. I wonder if many of the Psalms in the Bible would not make a lot of sense to us if we replaced the concepts of "enemies" and "foes" with that of "debts" and "creditors".

2. Most of us work for money. When we work we give of ourselves. We give our time and our energy. In exchange we receive a paycheck. It is logical that we come to equate our paycheck with our personal sense of worth and our identity. When our paycheck does not do as much as we would like it to do, it affects our view of ourselves. This is usually an alienating experience. Our Christian should undermine this reality. As Christians we believe that our value and our worth lies not in what we do, but in the identity that God in Christ has bestowed upon us. We are children of God. We are infinitely valuable even without the work that we do, even without a big income. The challenge is to allow this to give us rest.

3. Finally. If we recognise our intrinsic worth, we will also insist on working out ways to let our money work for us. We cannot allow money issues to ruin the quality of our lives. We can apply our minds and our wills to manage our finances to the best of our ability. There are some important steps that we can take that will improve our financial health. While this seems like such a worldly thing to do it is really a very spiritual task because it is an investment in ourselves, our welbeing, and our sense of place in this world.

I look forward to further sessions in this prayer meeting series.