God's Bottom Line; James

May the mumbling commence!

Most of us would know what is meant by the bottom line.  It all comes down to money.  Nothing else matters.  Everything is fair game if it will improve my wealth.

God has a different bottom line.  It all comes down to relationship.  Everything else is secondary.  Read from James chapter five (NJB):

Well now, you rich! Lament, weep for the miseries that are coming to you.  Your wealth is rotting, your clothes are all moth-eaten.  All your gold and your silver are corroding away, and the same corrosion will be a witness against you and eat into your body. It is like a fire which you have stored up for the final days. 

Can you hear crying out against you the wages which you kept back from the laborers mowing your fields? The cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord Sabaoth.  On earth you have had a life of comfort and luxury; in the time of slaughter you went on eating to your heart's content.  It was you who condemned the upright and killed them; they offered you no resistance. (5:1-6)

The bottom line in the United States is a cancer.  It eats away at our bodies.  It devours relationships.  It eventually will bring judgment on us.

The message is clear – think about those you relate with on a daily basis.  Think about the people that you work with.  Think about the people in your family.  Think about the people that you play with.  Think about the people you pray with.

Think and care for them as well or better than you think about and care for yourself.  Your prosperity and security and happiness are intertwined with the prosperity and security and happiness of all of humanity.

Let us give God’s bottom line a try.  Let’s jettison the “business model” for our church bodies.  Let’s trade on the basis of relationship.  Let’s try, with the help of the guiding Holy Spirit, to make relationships right with God and all of creation.

Enough mumbling for now…

Peace Out