Can't believe it's almost time for open enrollment for my benefits next year. I keep forgetting it's the end of September. It seems like just last week my supervisor and I were gushing over pictures of her daughters' homecoming. Apparently homecoming is coming up again in a few weeks!
I'm taking the money class for my Sunday school class this fall. One thing I love about how James P. is teaching the class is that he's not focusing so much on money itself, but seeing money as a representation/symbol of our relationship with the world around us. Last week we studied the fall in Genesis and how it severed our relationship with God (no longer walking with Him in the garden), each other (blaming one another), and God's creations (blaming the serpent, kicked out of garden, cursed to toil the earch). We studied how the end of chapter 2 described Adam adoring Eve and contrasted it against the end of chapter 4 with Lamech going home to two wives and boasting about the young man he killed. One thing I can take away from this is praying about how my attitude/use of money reveals my heart. For example, spending more than what's reasonable on fashionable clothing may represent placing my identity on appearance rather than in the Lord, pride and judgement against others, and contributing to the degradation of our environment through purchasing materials that aren't made from or processed by enviro-friendly methods. I dunno - I guess that's simplified a bit. Still, I'm excited about where this class is headed. This week we're studying the life of Abraham and how most of his life seems to (surprisingly) revolve around the accumulation of wealth.
Appropriately, last week's Time Magazine's cover story was about Christians who believe that blessings from God equals monetary riches. It makes me realize how our understanding of God is often so flawed and influenced still by the world around us.
One thing I learned on Sunday that I never noticed before is that God purposely took Adam through a journey of realizing his lack of a partner before providing him with Eve. I think that's kinda neat. I feel God often works that way: He has us realize our own needs before He provides us with the answer. I think that's why growing in our Christian walk is so difficult: before fully realizing our blessings, we must first experience what's void in lives without God.
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