The Economics of Enough
Mark 8:36-37 It is worth nothing for you to have the whole world if you yourself are lost. You could never pay enough to buy back your life.
I have a good friend who’s pretty well known around the world for having kicked off a huge ministry that helps people in the developing world to start up small enterprises, so that they become financially self-sufficient. This ministry creates, like, one job every twenty seconds. It’s incredible.
Now, he’s blessed to live in a nice house, in a nice suburb. But something I notice about him, even though he has a bit of money behind him these days, is that he doesn’t spend a lot of money on himself. He’s not a power dresser. He doesn’t drive a flashy car, or sport one of those expensive gold watches.
Instead, he spends his life and presumably his resources, flying around the world, offering his skills to achieve some amazing things. To save thousands of young women each month from sex trafficking. To bring fresh, clean water into communities that have none.
There’s something, a principle that he carries around in his heart that I want to share with you today. He calls it, the “economics of enough”. The question that he often asks people, is: “At what point is enough, enough?” It’s a great question to be asking in a world where those who have the most, always, somehow, want more.
After all, you can only sleep in one bed, live in one house, drive one car at a time, right? Why is it that we always want more? Why do people’s hearts always yearn, for more? Jesus put it like this:
It is worth nothing for you to have the whole world if you yourself are lost. You could never pay enough to buy back your life. (Mark 8:36-37)
It seems to me that we live in a world where people, even might I say, people who profess to believe in Jesus, are intent on selling their souls for things that, whilst they might be shiny and nice and alluring today, will be gone tomorrow.
Seriously, at some point enough is enough. At some point, we need to say to ourselves – I don’t need all this stuff. In fact, who needs this money more than I do?
Maybe you think that’s a tad idealistic. Hmm. Tell that to the mother in the refugee camp in Somalia whose baby has just died in her arms.
The economics … of enough.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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