When I have suffered a terrible defeat or great loss, I should turn to God and ask for help

The most important message I picked up from today’s readings overall is When I have suffered a terrible defeat or great loss, I should turn to God and ask for help.

My primary takeaway from each of the passages was this:

• Numbers 3 & 4:  Specific duties and requirements for the various clans within the tribe of Levi (the Levites) and their descendants. 
• Luke 16: Jesus tells the parable of the crafty steward, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and speaks about the indissoluble nature of marriage.
• Psalms 60: A prayer for help after a terrible defeat and loss.
• Proverbs 29: A variety of instructions and warnings about correct behavior and incorrect behavior.

Jesus talked about money more than any other subject. However, when he was talking about money, he wasn’t always (and in fact was hardly ever) actually talking about money. The way Jesus talked about it most of the time, it was a metaphor or an analogy for something else, and usually about where we place our priorities, or how we operate in the world.

In the parable of the crafty steward, we see a man who is about to lose everything, so he gets the people who owe his employer money to pay their bill by giving them a big discount. The discount he gave them was his commission on the transaction. So he does right by his employer, in the end, by giving up any money he would have made himself. In doing so, he leaves his dissatisfied employer what is owed to him, and he also ingratiates himself to the people who owed the money, and now they are in debt to him. He has made new friends he will need now that he is about to be unemployed.

The crafty steward got himself into that trouble by being dishonest, or at least too free with his employer’s property (spending it as if it were his own).

Jesus uses this parable to talk about being honest in all of our dealings with other people. He uses money as a metaphor for the condition of our hearts. If we are dishonest with money, what else are we dishonest about? He tells us that if we are fortunate enough to have money, we should use it to win friends by helping people.

The Pharisees don’t like this, of course. I’ve often had difficulty understanding this chapter, but that is likely because I am not the one at whom it was aimed. It was aimed at the Pharisees. It is aimed at anyone who is in a position of power and is in control of a lot of wealth, especially if some of that wealth somehow landed in their own pockets.

My grandmother had a saying, “A hit dog hollers.” The Pharisees were hit dogs, and they hollered at this parable because they knew in their hearts that they were the ones Jesus was talking to.

The parable about the rich man and Lazarus is a warning. Jesus is telling them, “It’s not too late for you. You have time to change things and make amends.” We can only fix what is broken in this life, not in the next.

In Psalms 60, we have a prayer for help after a terrible defeat and loss. What a coincidence–the crafty steward may have relied on this Psalm when considering his circumstances. We can certainly rely on it when find ourselves having suffered a defeat or a loss.

Proverbs 29 is full of a variety of wisdom, advice, and consequences for incorrect behavior; much of which the Pharisees and the crafty steward could have benefitted from.

That’s what I got out of it. What did you get out of the readings today?

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This post is part of the series, “Read the Bible in a Year.”

To see other posts in this series, go to the Chronological Index of Read the Bible in a Year Posts.