warned us not to store up material
possessions for this life. He saw
clearly that material possessions at
best were temporary. Indeed, as a
lady I was visiting said to me
recently, “Vicar, we brought nothing
into this world and we can take
nothing out” And she is absolutely
right – we are going to leave
everything behind - jobs, houses,
cars, clothes, looks, you name it so surely we should guard against
getting too attached to them or
totally absorbed in them. Unlike
the banker at whose funeral there
was a misprint of the hymn, 'Guide
me O thou Great Redeemer'.
Instead of 'Land me safe on
Canaan's side' it read, 'Land my
safe on Canaan's side.' The fact is,
we certainly can't take anything
with us. When rich people die, they
do not just leave behind a lot of
money - they leave it all behind.
‘The love of money is a root of all
evil’ - the desire for wealth is
seductive; amassing money can
consume us with harmful and destructive consequences, as the film
Wall Street depicts so vividly. Without doubt, money is powerful stuff.
It has great power for good. But it
can also cause havoc when wrongly
handled. One danger of money is
that it stirs up greed - the more you
have, the more you want. The
desire to be rich can become a
snare -