Time: God's Currency

In my last post I wrote that the Bible tells us to work for what we get and applied my own reasoning to say that there comes a point at which service isn’t enough and doesn’t solve the problem. Now it may seem like I am writing the opposite but we are also told to be generous and serve. For this there is a ton in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 17:5 “He who mocks the poor shows contempt for their Maker…” 19:17 “He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord…” 22:9 “A generous man will himself be blessed…” there is much more but this is a good sample. So now here’s the question, what does this mean? Well, from this we can see that God call us to love the poor, as we should love anyone. And a sign of love is spending time to serve because by loving others we show our love to God. This seems like the polar opposite to what I said earlier but it isn’t and here is why. If a parent gave everything their child asked for, every dollar their child needed we would hardly say they really loved them because once that child grows up into an adult he won’t know how to take care of himself. Real love is shown in time and effort to help that child grow and learn, not in gratifying every request. By making people dependent on service we can hardly say that we love them because all we are doing is making the problem worse. I would think that the best sign of love would be helping them up onto their own feet, investing our time, trust, and friendship and instead of our wallets. It’s easy to spend money because we can always get more, it’s time that we run out of.