Building Healthy Relationships: Devotions From Time of GraceSample

Love is better than money

Loving money and loving people are actually diametrically opposite forces. If you love money, basically you are just loving yourself, because you crave the power and pleasures and comforts that money brings. When you love other people, you are actually choosing to spend yourself, your energy and time, to make someone else’s life better. You are giving rather than taking.

At one time or another we have all believed that acquiring money would bring happiness. It never does. The opposite is true: “Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred” (Proverbs 15:17). You will find the greatest satisfactions in your life in the ways in which you have served other people’s needs. It’s as though they have the keys to your happiness.

When we spend our first energy tending our relationships, including our relationship with God, all of our needs will be met. If you spend your life chasing money, you will end up with nothing. There are no checkbooks in coffins. But you can take the people with you to heaven.

In Christ, love can survive the grave.