The truly rich person is the person who recognizes God as the Owner, and who gratefully accepts the call to be a temporary steward, content to please his Master.
In Luke 16, Jesus tells a parable of an estate manager who was in charge of his wealthy master’s entire household and business affairs. He had been wasting his master’s resources, we are told, and so he is called to account. Knowing that he’ll soon be out on the street, the manager makes deals with everyone who owes his master money. In doing so, he makes friends and secures himself the good graces of the very people he will likely need to rely on once he loses his position.
This is a strange parable because the master actually applauds the steward’s dishonest actions. But the point of the parable is not the bad ethics of the manager. Rather it’s the perspective he had. After realizing his time was short, he used his available resources to repurpose his life and prepare for the future. This should be our perspective as well. Our time on this earth is short – for most of us, just 70 or 80 years. Even if you live beyond 100, in eternal terms that’s less than the blink of an eye. Are we using God’s resources to prepare for eternity or are we wasting them in the here and now, acting as if this life is all there is?
