Day 021: Constancy

"Poverty humbles a man, but the hands of courageous men enrich others." Proverbs 10:4

Money is great.  It lets us buy the things we need and also the things we want.  We can use it to buy dinner at a decent fast casual restaurant and a lavish dessert from a world class bakery.  However, money is very fickle.  The banks grow and shrink, the stock market, even when tame, is capricious.  The job market (even if all the net sums show growth) is unstable.  Today you'll have a job and tomorrow you'll lose it.  Today you know the country has money saved up for you, but tomorrow you'll realize that you didn't fill out the right paperwork.

In today's society, to be poor is to be outcast.  Politicians will speak about the poor as if they are just a single pawn on a chess board.  They bunch all of those making money below a certain point as a single group of people that can be argued about rather than people who have lives and feelings.  Even worse, still, is those who were once rich but become poor.  In our society, we see that as a terrible form of humiliation.  Even in many churches, people will say that to be poor is to be at odds with God.  We assign value to people based off of how many slips of paper laced with linen they have or what a body of computers determines to be their worth.

Where is one to turn, then, if everybody makes fun of them for being poor?  That's where this proverb comes from.  It shows that money is something that is fickle.  Poverty happens!  The real value, though, comes from virtues, from wisdom, from courage.  This proverb calls us to be courageous and to reach out to those in need.  We are being called to enrich each other.

We've become so accustomed to putting others down based on their bank accounts or their clothes or houses or cars when we should really be building people up from their souls.  We are called to prepare the way of the Lord.  We can only do that by building each other up, by encouraging others, by paying into an economy of virtues.

Even though the global economies will see their growths and recessions, taking whatever lives with them, the economy of virtues, of mercy, of God's love, will only continue to grow.  When we take time to invest in our spiritual health, in our souls' growth, we will be enriched.  God's bank is right in front of us.  We just need to take a step into the doors so that we can grow from all that God has to give us.