Prov 30:5-9 / Lk 9:1-6
The book of Proverbs from which we are reading this week is well over 2000 years old, and yet the human dilemmas it raises are as fresh as today’s newspapers. We human beings get terribly tangled up in our possessions and our worries about having enough. Sometimes it’s a matter of having enough just to survive, and other times it’s having enough to compete socially or otherwise. The bottom line is that whatever we have, it rarely seems to be just right and we are either fearful or discontented.
There’s a lot of wisdom in the prayer in today’s reading. “Give me neither poverty nor riches; provide me only with the food I need; lest, being full, I deny you, saying, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or, being in want, I profane the name of God.”
Learning to live contentedly in the present with what we have is one of the greatest gifts we can ever give ourselves or our children. How many of our decisions, large and small, would be different if we had that habit, and how much happier would most of us would be!
Think hard about what you really need for a happy life. It may be that some adjustments in your choices and commitments are in order.
