Dear Friends,
In this letter to you, I intend to convey some information about how Jesus removes poverty and a life of dearth. Many of you will surely find this useful. Or, at least, I think so.😃
Some people mistakenly think that God wants His people
to deny themselves all pleasures of the body. The fact is that God wants us to
live an abundant life.
The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible
says, “I know that nothing is better for them (people) than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives, and also
that every man should eat and drink and
enjoy the good of all his labor—it is the gift of God.” (Ecclesiastes
3:12-13)
Again, he writes elsewhere in the same book, “As for every man to whom God has given riches and
wealth, and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice
in his labor—this is the gift of God. For he will not dwell unduly on the
days of his life, because God keeps him
busy with the joy of his heart.” (Ecclesiastes 5:19-20)
What the passages quoted above mean is that God wants us
to live abundant life, not a sinful life. If we seek after abundance of sinful
pleasures for our body, it is certain that even if we are able to have them,
ultimately we are going to experience the futility of sinful pleasures. They
are bound to impoverish our mind, body and spirit. This is because we lose
God’s blessing. It is God’s blessing
that is important.
With God’s blessing, even the little that we may have
with righteousness is worth more than immeasurable ill-gotten riches amassed by
rich but unprincipled people. Jesus practically proved this on more than one
occasion. Let us consider one of these instances.
As it is, Jesus was all the time surrounded by people
to such an extent that in order to communicate with God or spend time by
himself along with His twelve disciples, He had to withdraw Himself to
wilderness. And when people would somehow find out that He had withdrawn to
wilderness, they would come in large numbers to Him even in wilderness. So,
even in wilderness very often He could not choose to be by Himself.
On one such occasion a large crowd gathered around Him.
The number of men alone was 5000. But there were women and children too. How
many women and children were there, we do not know. As the day was coming to an
end, His disciples asked Jesus to send the crowd away so that they could go to
the villages nearby to get food for themselves. In reply Jesus asked them to
give them food there and then instead of sending them away.
As it is, in such a remote place neither Jesus nor His
disciples had planned a religious gathering. So, naturally, there was
absolutely no provision for such a large crowd. Amid this crowd, there was only
one boy who had five loaves of bread and two fish with him for lunch.
This little boy gave his lunch to Jesus and Jesus looked
up to Heaven, prayed and thanked God for five loaves of bread and two fish, and
distributed them to this crowd. That day thousands of people were fed on just
five loaves of bread and two fish! Not only all of them ate till they were
filled, when the disciples of Jesus gathered the leftover food, they picked up
as many as 12 baskets!
Now suppose that little boy had not given his lunch to
Jesus? Jesus could still have fed that crowd but that little boy would have
missed the opportunity to receive God’s blessing. But since that boy gave to
Jesus what he had, it shows how noble he was by nature. That’s why not only he
himself got bellyful to eat but also thousands of men and women and children
had had more than enough to eat. The disciples of Jesus estimated the cost of
feeding this crowd at half a year’s salary, that is, approximately 200 denarii.
It gives us fair idea about how greatly God blessed the little that that boy
had.
There are people in this world whose confidence heavily
relies on their bank balance. Therefore, their constant effort is to increase
it to the extent that they are rid of worries concerning financial stability in
life. Bible records incidents which
radically redefine the meaning of sound economy. At least one such incident
needs to be described here.
The one I am going to narrate here is about the prophet
Elijah and a widow who lived in a place called Zarephath in Israel. There was a
wicked king named Ahab who was ruling over the nation of Israel. Prophet Elijah
told Ahab that as long as he (Elijah) would not command rain to fall, rain
would not fall in Israel. That, exactly, did happen.
Elijah stopped rain which resulted in a nation-wide
famine. That famine was so hard on entire land that water resources were all
gone. Elijah knew the king alright; therefore, he ran away and hid himself in a
poor widow’s house for several years.
The circumstances under which Elijah met that widow for
the first time were quite remarkable. Bible describes the whole sequence of
events in the following terms:
“So he (Elijah) went to Zarephath. When he came to the
town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked,
‘Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?’ As she was
going to get it, he called, ‘And bring me, please, a piece of bread.’
‘As surely as the Lord your God lives,’ she replied, “I
don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in
a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and
my son, that we may eat it—and die.’
Elijah said to her, ‘Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as
you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have
and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this
is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used
up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the
land.’
She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there
was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of
flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the
word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.”
Now my simple question to my reader is this: Which
situation is better? A handsome bank balance that is bound to get used up or a
jar of flour and a jug of oil that would only increase everyday with use for
years on end? People belonging to all classes were hard hit by the famine that
prevailed in Israel during that period of time, but a poor widow’s family and
Elijah had enough to eat all the time that famine was in the land. When God
blesses a person, that person will always have enough of all that he needs, and
he will not have to worry about future.
Of course, these instances should not make you think
that God gives you little and blesses it so that the little you have will
suffice for you. Bible also is full of instances in which God blessed
individuals by making them king of a great nation from a humble situation in
life. Men of God such as Abraham, Job, King David, King Solomon, etc were the
wealthiest persons of their time.
The
point I am making here is that we cannot measure God’s blessing quantitatively.
God’s blessing remains blessing no matter from whichever angle you look at it.
At the present time, we receive it in the name of Jesus. As stated before,
whatever you ask from God in the name of Jesus, God will give you.
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