Daily Reading: Luke 18:18–30

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. (Luke 18:23)

A friend once received a card Christmas morning. He opened it, then in a hurry to get to a present, tossed it into the fireplace. A few minutes later, his parents asked what he was going to do with the money that had been inside. He dashed to the hearth, but it was too late. A few hundred dollars went up in smoke. Decades later, his face still saddens as he recounts that day.

Another man became grief-stricken because Jesus asked him to give his money away. “To the poor?” he thought. “All of it?” Perhaps he could think of better ways to use it. Maybe he thought the poor were in the economic state they were because they were fiscally irresponsible, and by giving them his money, he, too, would watch it go up in flames.

But Jesus wasn’t asking him to burn his hard-earned cash. He just wanted him to reallocate it. In the strangest paradox, Jesus told the wealthy man that he would only become rich in heaven by choosing poverty in this lifetime.

Despite an economy where the risks are greater than the calculations, there is one way of utilizing our money that won’t ever cause it to go up in flames. In fact, it’s the only way we’re guaranteed to receive many times more in this age and in the age to come.

Do something today to help a person in need.

Stacy Voss loves to run, chase her kids, and hike in the mountains with her husband outside their Colorado home.