All Things To Enjoy

Picture yourself a little girl with her doll (or a little boy with his truck, if you’d feel more comfortable that way). You love your doll. It’s your very favorite thing.

Then the neighbor comes over and wants to play, too. You’re afraid that if the neighbor plays with it, perhaps she’ll steal it. Perhaps she’ll hurt it. So you shake your head stiffly and hold the doll close. You’ve protected your doll, but you’ve ceased to enjoy it.

Suppose the doll came alive and grew and had a mind of its own. That might be fun for a little while, until it started tickling you and wouldn’t stop. Yes, for a minute or two that was fun, but very soon you stopped enjoying it.

Somehow, as a kid, I came up with this theory that the only right thing to do with money was to save it. I didn’t have much, but saving was the thing to do. Then I learned that it was good to give it. So even though I still didn’t have much, I gave a lot of it away. Years later, the Lord finally got it through my thick skull that I didn’t need to feel badly about spending my money for things that I needed. But I got in there and adjusted that to mean that it was okay for me to buy the very cheapest variety of whatever it was. Carrots and rice were acceptable; dinner at a restaurant was not.

But, hold on a second. I saw it, with my own eyes, in the Bible. It said something like, if you are rich in goods, you should be rich in good works, too, and then it said something about God giving us richly of all things … to … enjoy? Did He mean that He gave us money to enjoy. Hmmm.

I think that’s what He did mean.

So, let us return to our example of the little girl with the doll. Her parents gave her the doll, hoping that she would enjoy it. Does that sound a little bit like God, giving us stuff to enjoy? You’d think it would be easy for us to do, but I think we need lessons. Lots of them. At least, I do.

I can’t seem to enjoy my money (or anything or anyone else, for that matter) when I’m too intent on saving it. I hold it close, and yes, I protect it, but in doing so, I am not enjoying it anymore. Oops. Who would have thought that you could be misusing money by saving it?

Neither can I enjoy it when it takes on a life of its own and tries to control me. Buy this! Buy that! You can’t be happy unless you have that thing you saw yesterday! Gotta buy it! That might be fun for a few minutes, but the charm quickly fades.

Somewhere between me holding it close, and it controlling my life, is a balance.

Enjoy it.

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