Daily Devotional • June 1
A Reading from 1 Timothy 6:6-21
6 Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, so thatwe can take nothing out of it, 8 but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. 9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.
11 But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. 16 It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
17 As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, 19 thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
20 Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge; 21 by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith.
Grace be with you.
Meditation
Let us begin with two acknowledgements: every one of us has a malformed relationship to money, be we rich or poor or somewhere in between (these concepts are relative to our society), and wealth and poverty are important themes in the Bible. Money matters, you might say. But how it matters—that’s less easy to parse.
Timothy helps us. One thing we know for certain is that we Christians are not supposed to yearn for wealth. Food and clothing — stand ins for the necessities for life as well as the joyous reception of God’s gratuitous gifts to us — matter to the extent that we need them, and they are gifts from God meant to be enjoyed and shared (indeed, the best way to enjoy them might be to share them). But Timothy points out that, well, you can’t take it with you. Eventually, even the richest person in the world will die, and that person will not bring any material goods (or immaterial goods — bonds and shares, for example) into the afterlife. But there is a kind of wealth that can be brought along. Timothy, along with the early church, thinks of faith in financial terms, as a deposit. By connecting faith to money, he tells us something about ourselves: we should care more about our faith than we care about our possessions, and we don’t.
Just like an investment, this deposit of faith can grow. Our faith grows as we do precisely what Timothy admonishes the rich to do: find ultimate security and happiness in God, give generously, act for the wellbeing of others. Keep the commandments, he says. Remember your baptismal confession. Love. This is not systematic theology, nor is it a blueprint for how to organize your finances, get out of debt, or invest well. It is a passage we can take into prayer, whether we are praying for provision or praying for stewardship. Use it as a litmus. Ask yourself, what is Timothy saying to me?
Elizabeth Hamilton’s writing has appeared in the Dallas Museum of Art, Southern Humanities Review, and Texas Monthly. She has an MFA from Seattle Pacific University. Find her work at elizabethannehamilton.com
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Houston
The Diocese of Exeter – The Church of England