By C. Thomas Hilton
It is the inordinate love of money that is wrong. The hoarding of it! Saving it only for your children is wrong. It is the assumption that money can buy anything that is wrong. Money is given to each of us to glorify God; if we use it for another purpose, then we misuse that gift. How we handle our money is a spiritual test.
Simon's real problem was a spiritual one. He had not fully given himself to God, so he misused what God had given him -- his money -- and Peter told him what to do with it. The Church is not for sale to the largest giver. The Christian faith is available to those who believe.
Across Northern Africa stretches the largest desert in the world -- the Sahara, almost as large as the United States. From east to west, it measures 3,200 miles, farther than the distance from New York City to San Francisco.
Advertisement
Mile after mile of scorching, shifting sand dunes make up the Sahara, where temperatures reach 130 degrees fahrenheit during the summer -- so hot that breathing is nearly impossible. Yet at the eastern edge of this mammoth oven lies one of the richest, most fertile valleys known to humankind -- the beautiful Nile Valley. Flowing through the valley is the great Nile River, its 4,160 miles making it the longest river in the world. It's not the river alone that makes the valley so abundantly fertile. It's the fact that the river overflows each year, generously depositing all over the valley layer upon layer of rich tropical soil, washed down from the jungles of Central Africa.
Like the River Nile, the mere flow of your life is meaningless in this desert world of today. It's when your heart generously overflows that you provide rich fertile soil for growth in the Lord's work.
There is nothing for sale here -- everything is free. Yet one effect of accepting God's gift of salvation is that our lives turn to giving. We know we must give to live. All true living is giving. It is God's gift to us that frees us to give ourselves to others.