[see your blessings and let your mind dwell therein] The wealth we see today is staggering. The sheer dollar amount behind one person’s name is increasingly astronomical to the point it boggles the mind. It seems even a modest salary is only always a drop in the bucket in comparison to the happiness the super elite must be experiencing. Net worth, for the most part, is a counterintuitive term. It’s a barometer that we can almost say exclusively is unhelpful in measuring life fulfillment. Worth.

A place where, if we happen to get there, so much will have changed, that the retirement cake will taste bland. I thought it would be “sweeter” at the top, or more pleasant at the end. In goes our drop and there sits the bucket. Large and unmoved by even our most diligent accomplishments. The sense of awe we counted on turns into quiet resentment. How dare they have so much more than me? They must be more human. Where did I go wrong?

To us, if we become silly and unspiritual, God will become nothing more than a poor vagabond. The man under the freeway with a cup labeled: Holy Spirit. What does he know about bills, status, and the future? What kind of God doesn’t want to rise the American way and show himself prominent? Christianity, nothing but a tattered book, antiquated teaching, and an empty building. But, it’s the material opulence that we’re bombarded with on a daily basis that changes, fundamentally, what we call a need.

God’s wealth, dispensed through the glory of Jesus Christ, is a level of spiritual wealth that predominately falls on deaf ears and almost always on hearts of stone. I accumulate wealth, yes, but, inwardly, my daily needs become compiled in the most twisted and worst sort of way. When the glory of Christ is not rebuilding my shattered soul, a special kind of spiritual impoverishment takes hold. As the visceral nature of sin can only be squelched for a time after which a contorted way of life is always the outcome. 

The love, hope, and belonging that come from God as he’s manifested in the flesh through the person and work of Jesus Christ is what, for a Christ follower, must come to define the true version of wealth. If we’re to have any meeting of our needs beyond circumstantial chance, it must become the glory of Jesus that provides our place in this life, our standing, and our solace. Our needs met, through a daily relationship that is eternally glorified, and, thus, well supplied.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭19‬ ‭NIV‬‬