Sunday, February 27, 2011: Matthew 6:24-34

At 28, Scott Harrison asked himself, "What would the opposite of my life look like?" As a businessman in New York, he had all the signs of success. But after asking himself this question, he used his considerable gifts in marketing to establish the organization charity: water, which is dedicated to providing safe water for those who don't have access to it.

The use of his natural gifts impresses me. We have within us all that we need to begin to see and think and then act in ways we have not thought possible. Wealth, after all, is a neutral word. It can refer to anything from affluent prosperity to whatever it is that one treasures.

While everyone has a relative or friend who is making good money because he or she is particularly skilled at money management, most of us are just getting by, and some of us are living at the edge of our means. In the past several years that edge has become a high cliff for many people. Many are asking: Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? In this one simple question, vastly different worldviews are presented and challenged in an instant. How we understand and respond to this passage in Matthew depends on our context: on whether we're sitting in a new bistro in Brooklyn or waiting in line in Bangladesh for a bag of flour.