Balancing the Spiritual and Material

When is having so much “stuff” enough and when is allowing those around us justify them to be ok with less. It is a delicate balance.

Ken Wytsma in Pursuing Justice says,

[quote style="boxed"]Rather than being in competition, as with the teeter-totter analogy, the spiritual and material aspects of life can be pictured as the two sides of a train track – meant to be inextricably connected to one purpose.[/quote]

I love this analogy.  To think of a teeter-totter with Spiritual on one side and Material on the other, each side going up and down.  Never balancing each other out.  It’s kind of how some of us live today.  When we have more than enough, we still want more.  We can give and give, but never really fill the pinch of what it’s like to give when you feel like your pocketbook is saying no. With some of us not giving to those in need so that we can continue to have more.

The status quo.

But instead Ken talks about how we should be like a set of train tracks.  Running side by side, parallel from each other.  With both Spiritual and Material going in the same direction.  Arriving at the finish line – together.

My prayer as I begin to set my feet on Guatemala is that I would be an extension of John 15 and become the branches as a follower of Jesus.  That just as parallel as that train track and just as I am connected to the Vine that I can be fully engulfed in seeing this earth (material) as how God (Spiritual) sees it.  Our desires to have success, have stature, or chasing the almighty dollar will not heal the land (2 Chronicles 7:14). It may help but humbleness can be hard for some to obtain.