“Growth and Gain.”

H,

There has always been this emphasis on growing and gaining in a material sense as a marker of a successful life. We need some physical sign of inner balance. We think this comes in money or recognition or something we can point to, even in this shifting sands we live in now. Many lives have gone to this false god; many hearts grown cold in pursuit of this mythical golden fleece.

People of faith really ought to know better. We have been battered by one extreme and have rolled softly into the other. Once, it was the church rat and now it is the church bat, vampiric and driven more by the survival of the fittest guidebooks than any holy writ. The ones who took poverty as a sword have now taken prosperity as a shield. Both stances do not answer the real question of existence and value, but in the fallen pages, every placebo is marketed as a cure. It is never a good idea to dismiss things with a wave, there is no shame in being poor and no inherent evil in being rich.

There is a need for social justice, for mobility, for food and shelter, educated and well-fed children and safety. Yet, none of these things are eternal. They are some of the ways we negotiate this plane, but they will come to a stop.

Growth and gain can only lie in the things that will always matter. We must always resolve things in this way. It must be the way we survive the bad and access the good. It must be the way we love, the way we give, the way we lead and the way we navigate all the spaces on current earth. It has nothing to do with money but has everything to do with value.