11.21.23 - James 5: 1-3
What can you identify as miserable in your relationships right now? What's one habit or value you want to start changing to mediate this misery?
Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure during the last days.
James is a super practical, nuts & bolts kind of epistle.
It’s a straight-forward read and brooks no nonsense. This warning to the rich doesn’t come entirely out of the blue.
Beginning with chapter 4, the author checks in about “those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?”
It’s a rich person’s cravings that cause the stark imagery describing the miseries that result from un-checked wealth.
“Rot, rust, moth-eaten” – all signs of a resource once useful now destroyed from within… It’s not just the wealthy who have unresolved cravings.
Personal responsibility is key to a healthy relationship with God, self, neighbor and earth.
What kind of misery can you detect in your daily life that is in excess of God’s grace, provision & hope?
-- Libby Tedder Hugus