World Unyielding

The rich and the poor have this in common,
The LORD is the maker of them all.

Proverbs 22:2

We can distinguish between the rich and the poor, wealth and poverty, much and little. But who is willing to acknowledge the LORD as the maker of all? He not only created each individual but also ordained the means by which you and I have obtained what we have today. He is the maker of persons and the maker of wealth through His providence.

If it pleases the sovereign and all-wise God for you to lose all you have, He will see to it. Likewise, God can cause you to have riches. All He decides is according to the counsel of His own will. Does that rub you the wrong way? There’s much talk about self-made men and self-made women. Those same people suppose themselves to be something when, apart from God, they are nothing. They suppose they are doing us a favor in telling us how to be high-value men and women, when, apart from the Holy God, they have no value at all.

Any worth found in us is derived from God and gifted to us by way of His grace. Would you betray the giver for the gifts? Depart from the sins so often tied to the abundance or scarcity of wealth: pride, greed, strife, rivalry, and divisions. Have a mind raised above the fleeting possessions of this world and fixed upon the eternal God, your maker, who knows firsthand both utter poverty and untold riches.

Blessed Jesus, you, who, being God, made all and own all, yet took on human flesh and were born into desperate poverty. What’s more, poverty would hardly leave you. Through your death upon the cross, you bring a chosen people into spiritual riches that you alone bestow. You laid down your life as you were hauled up on the cross, suffering the wrath of God, the just for the unjust. Never before and never again will so rich a person lose so much in the sight of God and man. By your poverty, you have made my impoverished spirit rich, and now I have come to possess that which will last into all eternity, for you have given me yourself. Hallelujah!