"Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thessalonians 5:18
	IT'S ONLY  MONEY Money, money, money / Must be funny  / In the rich man's world  Money, money, money / Always sunny  / In the rich man's world  Aha-ahaaa  / All the things I could do / If I had a little money  It's a rich man's world (Benny Andersson & Bjorn Ulvaeus, © 1976 Union Songs AB) Those words are part of a song by the famous pop group ABBA.   It was first recorded over thirty years ago but its subject is still a very volatile topic these days.  It's not only the current state of the economy and the battering it has recently taken, political or otherwise, but it's a topic that hits even closer to home. Plenty of famiy arguments start over money.  What's yours, mine, or ours?  What kind of allowance should the children receive?  What can we save for future needs or emergencies?  Why is it that we always seem to run out of money before we run out of month? Is it really "a rich man's world"? The Bible has a lot to say to both rich and poor.  After all, becoming a Christian will not necessarily make us lose everything, nor will it guarantee success in every venture.  Throughout history there have been rich and poor Christians.  But both rich and poor Christians have discovered something about money.  In fact they have discovered the same thing about it and have found that they both can be happy although one may have a lot and the other a little. Their discovery?  That money is very fragile.  It is a weak and undependable thing, so much tied to the present and able to be rendered completely worthless.  On the surface this can sound like an ivory-tower philosophy.  We all pay lip service to this kind of thinking, but no one lights a hundred-dollar bill just to watch it burn.  We don't expect this concept to ever fade completely.  Nor do we need to as long as the country is financially sound, the government holds up, etc. But this discovery is more than an understanding of economics.  The person who can use money without selling his soul to it has discovered something about life itself.  He has discovered that many things in life are able to be enjoyed only for the moment.  Cut a flower from your yard, take it into your house, put it in a vase, and enjoy its beauty and fragrance.  But in a few hours or days it will be wilted and gone.  Don't cry over its passing.  Don't adore it as anything more than it is:  a pretty flower.  Our lives are full of all kinds of things like that, but they are like cut flowers -- beautiful for the moment and no more; wonderful to enjoy but not to live for. The valuable things of life are elsewhere.  They are in having a goal which cannot wither or fade.  Real riches are those permanent features of life which not even death can take away from us.  They are available to us, not by way of the bank but by way of the cross, where our Lord Jesus Christ, "though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9) Both the rich and the poor know a lot about life.  But the poor man doesn't need to curse God because he has no money.  He may be short on some attractive possibilities, but not short of life itself.  The rich man is overjoyed that he didn't fall into the trap of thinking that he had everything, a kind of reasoning that would have deprived him of the value of Christ's cross.  God provides for both, giving us so many things to enjoy.  Thank him for these gifts.  Ask his help in using them for what they are:  temporary, and to never get lost in them to the exclusion of our real treasure of eternal life through Christ.                                                                                            Pastor Kugler
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