“This world has nothing for me
And this world has everything
All that I could want
And nothing that I need”
Caedmon’s Call, “This World”
“Our sticky fingers are motivated by desire for control just as much as for power—our tendency is to protect against the unknown future, especially against a future of need or dependence. This is illusory because of, well, the way life works in its unpredictability, but also because our thirst for security and control is just as ruthlessly insatiable as our hunger for love. Today, material comforts, in all of their abundance, are the yardstick of well-being. We can now meet all of our material needs in a way that shoves God into a corner along with our emptied shopping bags and useless impulse purchases.”
Emily Hornsby, “New Research on Wealth Confirms What Jesus Said 2,000 Years Ago”
“Jesus—upon whom the Father looks and says, ‘This is my beloved Son’—is the only rich man in the world; we, who spend our whole lives in the pursuit of wealth, come in the end only to the poverty of death. And we complain bitterly, unable to make head or tail of such a cruel reversal. But in Jesus—who made his grave with the wicked in their moral poverty and with the rich man in the death of all his possessing—all the pointless pursuing and all the sad incomprehension are turned to our good. He waits for us in our deaths. Quite literally, there is nothing we need to do except die.”
Robert Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment