Hebrews 13:5

How much is enough?
It’s not a question we’re often encouraged to ask. Indeed, it’s a question you can barely hear over the drumbeat of consumerism and the ka-ching! of the cash registers.

Your average mall, after all, is not designed to foster reticence, much less
thoughtfulness.

It’s a place made to seduce you to want. It is money’s church, and we come to worship, to seek the face of glory in aisle after aisle of shiny things, each vowing to make us better, each promising to make us whole. Acquisition, we are told, is heaven.

It’s a lie, but one we gleefully believe. Especially when acquisition lies beyond our means.

At the end of the day, money is only money. So it’s good sometimes to step back and question what we value. At what point does living come to be about something larger than accrual? At what point does your gaze turn outward from your own wants.

At what point do you become finally free?
Maybe you’ve found that point. Maybe you’re still looking for it. But the sad thing is that for some of us, no such point exists. There’s something small and poor about the person for whom acquisition is forever an end unto itself.

That’s true if you’re worth $90 billion. It’s also true if you’re worth only $1.19.

Leonard Pitts, Jr.