Rev 3:14-22. I am rich
When I was 18, I invested a thousand dollars of my summer wages in a mutual fund. That was 48 years ago. It was a good mutual fund.
A year later I withdrew it in order to hitch-hike around Europe. If Iamprsquod left that money alone, Iamprsquod actually be rich today.
But then Iamprsquod never have hitch-hiked around Europe, seen what Iamprsquod seen and experienced what Iamprsquod experienced.
I would just have a lot of money and no youth to squander it in. Both choices were worldly, so it really didnamprsquot matter which I chose, wealth of money or wealth of experience.
When I was 45, I had a half million dollars in my pension fund.
The goal was to have a million. If I had stayed at my school and left the plan alone instead of changing the portfolio, I couldamprsquove had that million and retired ten or eleven years later. But I made two mistakes.
First I changed the portfolio from conservative Canadian commodities to aggressive American stocks.
Then I left my school and a very good salary for a school in America at just over half the salary.
When the financial collapse of the 90s occurred I lost almost all of my pension fund.
My greed for money and experience led to my financial ruin and then to an adulterous relationship that cemented my downfall and drove me back to Canada and then to Korea.
When I met the friend Iamprsquod gone through college with, he was rich in money and poor in experience. We shared our stories. His was dull to my ears. Mine sounded like a movie to him, he said. At the end of our careers we both had similar positions of responsibility.
My friendamprsquos goal had been to be richer every year even if it was only by a dollar. He achieved his goal of worldly wealth. My goal was to write stories, find God, and live happily ever after.
I wrote stories but not the kind I thought I would. I found God but not in the way I thought I would. I bought gold refined in the fire of hardship and suffering beyond what I imagined and barely held on to my faith.
I bought white clothes through ten years of confessing my sins and shames in mokjang and in front of the congregation. I put the salve of the Word on my eyes because Iamprsquom spiritually blind, and when I miss a day or two or a week or a month, then I become so blind that God has to discipline me until I repent.
An old professor of mine wrote a book of poems titled ampldquoHappy Enoughamprdquo.
I thought it was a sad title when I was young. Now I am old and I see how apt a title it is for this world. Iamprsquom rich enough in worldly terms, and Iamprsquom happy enough in worldly terms. Iamprsquom okay, not worldly wealthy but not so poor that I live in a small room and have one pair of shoes as once I did. I have no pension but I have more than enough to live.
What I want, though, is Godamprsquos illimitable joy and Godamprsquos immeasurable wealth. I donamprsquot want the spiritual dead end of the Laodicean tepid world of happy enough. I want the abundant life of my Lord.
Thanks to Godamprsquos mercy in my life of sinful choices and the repentance that restores me, I am on that happy road of depending on God as my rock and refuge because I see how ampldquowretched, pitiful, poor, blind and nakedamprdquo (17) I am, utterly unable to save myself.
Application: give a youth QTin to another of my students who needs it, suffering from his own poor choices.
Lord, let me not be lukewarm in your mouth. Do not spit me out.
