How do we measure our worth?
The man of wealth…
“We put our names on the waiting list for the retirement center,” he told me.
“It’s the one everybody in town wants to get into…”
“But I don’t know if we really want to go there… the biggest place you can get is 1200 square feet…”
“Our kitchen and dining room are bigger than that…”
1200 square feet…
He couldn’t imagine living in a space that small…“Maybe we’ll just stay here.”
“Here” is a large home…maybe estate is a better word… built decades ago in an area where everybody wanted to build.
He could have built an even bigger house…
A fancier house…
A more expensive house…
But this was the right house
On the right lot…
It made just the right statement.
He had gotten everything he wanted out of life…
He had lived just the right life…
He was really something…
The man of poverty…
His house was 16 feet wide and 50 feet long.
He bought it when he was discharged from the army after World War II.
He raised his family in the four rooms of that house.
He could have taken a better job…
He could have bought a bigger house…
But this was the right house
On the right lot…
It made just the right statement.
He had gotten everything he wanted out of life…
He had lived just the right life…
He was really something….
Have you ever noticed, how in our poverty or our wealth we focus on having the right things?
The right careers…
The right houses…
The right lives?
Have you noticed how we look back at all those things and think we are really something?
For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Galatians 6:3
How much better would it be if we measured our worth not through the accumulation of the right things… but through the development of the right relationship with God?
What if we simply returned to God?
‘Return to me,’ declares the LORD Almighty, ‘and I will return to you… Zechariah 1:3
2 thoughts on “How to Measure Your Worth”
Absolutely true! I don’t know why people love to buy things even if they don’t really need them. To impress others? To satisfy their inner hunger? But these material things only makes us more hungry for Something bigger. And going back to God is the only way to satiate our hunger. As usual, this is a great read, Bob.
Thanks for your comment, Lux. You are absolutely Right….The hunger for material things is never-ending. What surprised me about this story is that the two people… although they came from different economic circumstances…one very wealthy and one living close to poverty… were each in their own way proud of their material status. One was proud of what he had accumulated and the other was proud of what had NOT accumulated. It was a revelation to realize that pride in material things is not limited to those who have accumulated a lot of them. Satan can always find a way to distract us from God.