March 19: His Provision
♫ Music:
Day 23 - Thursday, March 19
Title: ON THE LOVE OF MONEY
Scripture: 1 Timothy 6:7-11
For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But flee from these things, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.
Poetry:
Blind Joy
by John Frederick Nims
Crude seeing’s all our joy: could we discern
The cold dark infinite vast where atoms burn
—Lone suns—in flesh, our treasure and our play,
Who’d dare to breathe this fern-thick bird-rich day?
HIS PROVISION
I could easily glance over these words of Paul written to his young mentee, Timothy, without letting them sink in, caution, and point me towards freedom. His rhetoric about taking things with after death, wanting to get rich, plunging into ruin and destruction, longing for money – in my mind these phrases conjure up images of opulent kings entombed with their possessions, CEO’s who defraud millions, or phony televangelists with gold watches and private jets.
I, on the other hand, am but a humble nonprofit employee simply trying to provide for my family. Sure I also happen to worry about balancing our monthly budget, saving for retirement, the obscene cost of college for our kids someday, updating our house, keeping our cars running – the list goes on. Who am I kidding? It’s clear upon reflection that the struggle to be content and resist the gravitational pull of money-loving is as much my struggle as anyone else’s.
Part of the challenge for someone like me, and perhaps like you, is that the secular culture in which I live has normalized worries like those above. They don’t show up on my radar as problems, or as threats to living the life that is truly life – in fact the narrative I’m subliminally sold is that they are the means to that life. Even in Christian culture, there is often value ascribed to prudence, planning, reaping what we sow. There is Biblical precedent for this, and these virtues can be a genuine means of blessing - but they’re also susceptible to corruption. They can be hijacked so that we think of ourselves as the providers of what we need and lose trust - or even the expectation - that God will provide. Or we may find ourselves so focused on sowing for the future that we are unable to reap God’s very presence in the here and now.
In my own experience this hijacking is subtle, sneaky. There’s no need for a dramatic debacle when it comes to “falling into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires” for love of money; like the proverbial frog in the pot we can be boiled alive slowly without even realizing it. And isn’t that just the type of deception that you’d expect from the devil?
In the included artwork, Vanities Prosperous Anemone, Chinese Christian artist Ding Wei illustrates the ideas of deception, ambiguity, and fatal allure related to wealth. What appears on the surface to be a beautiful flower necklace is revealed to have deeper, darker meaning when we learn that the Anemone flower represents sickness and death in Chinese culture, and the artist intends to evoke connotations not just of a necklace, but of a noose. Altogether, with John Nim’s cynical Blind Joy and the somber, trance-like tone of Olafsson’s Kyriena, we get a sharply perceptive though rather despairing impression from the day’s selected pieces.
That impression is instructive, like Paul’s vivid warning to Timothy, and it’s worth meditating on. But for the Christian that impression is not ultimate. Our savior also used flowers in His imagery about wealth. He invited us to consider the beauty of the flowers of the field - beauty derived solely from God’s lavish provision and not from our slavish preparation. Ultimately it is only by trusting in His provision that we experience freedom, and the life that is truly life.
Prayer:
Lord, show us where we’ve indulged in the love of money; show us the damage its doing and the destruction it leads to. Empower us with your Spirit to trust in you to provide what we need, to learn contentment and to experience your peace. Strengthen us to bear the sacrifice of giving up and letting go, and lend us Your compassion to share generously with those in need.
Amen
About the Art:
Vanities: Prosperous-Anemone
Wei Ding
2018
Oil on canvas
110 cm x 90 cm
From the Matter + Spirit: A Chinese/American Exhibition
Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity
There is an old Chinese proverb, sometimes attributed to Laozi, the founder of Daoism: “Calamity has its roots in prosperity, prosperity has its roots in calamity.” Since the opening of China under Deng Xiaoping following the disastrous decade of the Cultural Revolution that effectively decimated not just the cultural heritage and economy but relational trust itself, the Chinese people were given a remarkable level of discretion in the way they lived their personal lives, freedom to travel, all manner of “opportunity” and an economic system that would provide them with greater material wealth and comforts. Wei Ding’s Vanities: Prosperous—Anemone is a poignant representation of the insidiousness of materialism and prosperity that promises so much but comes with a very big price tag. The seductive beauty of the bejeweled necklace of flowers is actually a noose that will strangle our very selves, rendering us lifeless in the most profound sense. The thick impasto of the flowers lend the flowers a tangibility that reflects the allure of prosperity and the “good life.”
About the Artist:
Wei Ding, born in 1978 in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China, received his bachelor’s degree from Shandong Arts Institute in 2001. In 2009 he received his master’s degree from the School of Art of Qufu Normal University, Shandong Province. From September 2013 to July 2014 Wei Ding studied as a visiting scholar in Professor Sui JIanguo’s workshop in the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is currently a faculty member in the School of Art of Qufu Normal University and lives in Rizhao, Shandong Province.
About the Music:
“Kyriena” from the album Bach Reworks
About the Composer:
Víkingur Ólafsson (b.1984) is an Icelandic pianist. He has performed with leading orchestras in Europe and America, including Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and with conductors including Thomas Adès, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Santtu-Matias Rouvali. Ólafsson made an unforgettable impact with the release of his two landmark albums, Philip Glass Piano Works and Johann Sebastian Bach on Deutsche Grammophon, for whom he is an exclusive recording artist. Praised by audiences and critics around the world for revealing new possibilities within the music, his Johann Sebastian Bach features diverse original compositions and transcriptions by the pianist. The album has appeared on multiple best albums of the year lists, was named one of the greatest ever Bach recordings on Gramophone, and won Best Instrumental and overall Album of the Year at the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Awards. In the 2019-20 season Víkingur will be artist-in-residence at Berlin Konzerthaus, with fourteen performances over eleven different projects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%ADkingur_%C3%93lafsson
https://vikingurolafsson.com/about/
About the Performers:
Vikingur Olafsson and Skuli Sverrisson
Skúli Sverrisson (b. 1966) is an Icelandic composer and bass guitarist residing in New York City. Over the past two decades, Sverrisson has worked with a veritable who’s who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends to music icons and composers. Sverrisson is known for his work as an artistic director for Olof Arnalds (Innundir Skinni, Vid og Vid), recordings with Blonde Redhead, and as a musical director for legendary performance artist Laurie Anderson. Sverrisson has appeared on over 100 recordings and has performed around the world with a wide range of artists. He has been awarded 5 Icelandic Music Awards, including Icelandic Album of the Year for Seria in 2006.
https://www.newvelle-records.com/pages/skuli-sverrisson
About the Poet:
John Frederick Nims (1913- 1999) was an American poet and academic. He was educated at DePaul University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Chicago, where he received his PhD in 1945. He went on to teach English at numerous colleges and universities, among them Harvard University, the University of Florence, the University of Toronto, the Bread Loaf School of English, Williams College, and the University of Missouri. Nims was also an extremely influential editor of Poetry magazine from 1978 to 1984. His books of poetry include Zany in Denim (1990); The Six-Cornered Snowflake and Other Poems (1990); The Kiss: A Jambalaya (1982); Knowledge of the Evening (1960), which was nominated for a National Book Award; A Fountain in Kentucky (1950); and The Iron Pastoral (1947). Among his honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities Grant, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, The Guggenheim Foundation, and The Institute of the Humanities.
https://poets.org/poet/john-frederick-nims