Your Money Is No Good Here: The Only Way to Prepare for Judgment Day

 Cash can't cushion you from metaphysical disaster.

Glenn Carstens-Peters

 

NEARLY EVERY FINANCIAL ADVISOR on the planet advocates for having a cash reserve to cover unexpected expenses. Author and former television show host Suze Orman recommends you save eight months of expenses. Famed radio personality Dave Ramsey suggests three to six months is enough.

Sage advice if you ask me.

Costly mishaps have a way of barging into our lives without permission, and for those without a large, unallocated, cash fund, such events can have devastating effects.

Though they might differ on the recommended amount, these experts all use similar monikers to describe the account. They used words like emergency fund, safety net, buffer, and rainy-day fund.

Several years ago Katie and I decided to sell one of our sedans to buy a larger vehicle. With the adoption of our two foster boys, we had gone from zero to three children in the span of about a year, and elbow room was getting tight in the back of that Nissan Sentra.

We found a buyer and arranged to meet him at his bank the next morning.

Cursed Are the Spoiled Brats: What Jesus Meant When He Said the First Will Be Last

freestocks

Can I confess something to you? I've always felt for the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Yes, he is a selfish, spoiled brat, but I guess I resonate with his complaint a little.

Perhaps it is because I've never been super rebellious. Yes, there have been seasons of my life when I've been far from God. I've been in some dark places, but I never disbelieved. I never ran away from home. I never dropped out of school and got a tattoo.

But this older brother was loyal to his father. He was steadfast. And when the no-good brother comes home he gets a party? How is that fair?

And what about the poor saps who worked all day in the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard?

If you remember the parable, a master hired workers early in the morning, at midday, and late in the afternoon and yet paid all hired hands the same wage. As a result, those hired first ended up earning the lowest per-hour wage. How is that fair?

Good News for Guttersnipes Like Us: Heaven Is Not a Meritocracy

Do you ever wonder what Jesus meant when he said, The last will be first, and the first last?

The statement sounds like typical rabbi-speak or else something Yoda would say were we to invert the wording a bit: First the last shall be, perhaps.

Jon Tyson

Nevertheless, Jesus didn't waste words. So the phrase, no doubt, points to some important truth. In fact, last month we explored one such meaning behind the phrase. That is, heaven's value system is often in opposition to that of this world's. The rich young man of Mark 10 and Matthew 19 found this out the hard way when Jesus told him to sell his possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Jesus.

The rich man, obsessed with firstness, could not do it.

And yet, if we probe deeper we uncover more layers behind the saying, The last will be first. These nuances are interesting and useful enough that I thought it would be worth spilling more digital ink in contemplation of the phrase.

How to Be Last in a World Consumed by Firstness

I've read the gospels many times, but I always seem to stumble when Jesus says, "The last will be first." I have an inkling of understanding, but the gravity of the phrase seems to elude me.

What did Jesus mean when he said, "The last will be first, and the first will be last"?

Braden Collum

In providing some commentary on the subject I must first confess something you probably already know about me:

The Only Way to Remove Darkness from Your Life

Anton Darius

Did you know I write a monthly article for my email subscribers?

This month we talked about the principle, first credited to Aristotle, that nature abhors a vacuum. But rather than looking at the axiom through the lens of physics, we turn it sideways and use it to view our spiritual lives.

Here's how it starts:

The older I get, the more I recognize the universality of the axiom, nature abhors a vacuum. 

Want to know where to find my children? Go to whichever room is the tidiest. Once they've wrecked it, they move on to the next. They never play in their bedrooms unless the area is clean. Once it is sufficiently cluttered, they'll search for a neater space. 

But this isn't just true of children and play areas: 

-The newly retired quickly find their calendars fuller than when they had a job.
-In weather systems, high pressure always flows to low pressure.
-Adding more lanes to the freeway should alleviate traffic, right? Well, maybe not. Research shows that increasing throughput might actually promote congestion. 

It seems in many areas of life vacuums--which we'll loosely define as empty spaces or the lack of something--are unnatural and unstable. They don't last. 

We give the Greek philosopher Aristotle credit for first coming up with this principle even though he never stated the axiom as nature abhors a vacuum. The current phrasing seems to have originated with the French writer François Rabelais in the sixteenth century. 

Where am I going with this? 

While we're not as concerned with physics in this space, nevertheless I think the principle applies to our spiritual lives too.

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See you next month!