What do you think about when you hear the words: “Quality of Life”
Do you think about how much fun there is to be had and how much wealth there is to accumulate?
Do you think about health care issues?
Do you think about what kind of clothes a person wears?
What kind of car they drive?
What school they attend?
What kind of home they live in?
Do you think about the food they eat?
Do you realize that how much fun you have and how much wealth you accumulate impacts the quality of life, not just for yourself, but for other people as well?
If you share from your abundance with others, if you invite the poor in spirit and poor in wealth you impact their life in a positive way. If you exclude them, you impact their lives in negative ways.
In Luke’s Gospel we can read two parables that give us understanding about what the Lord thinks about wealth and quality of life.
“The Parable of the Rich Fool” is found in Luke 12:13 – 21
The Parable of the Shrewd Manager is found in Luke 16:1-15
The things I always had trouble with in the jobs I held was the paperwork. Time and again my superiors would say to me – June, you need to spend less time with the people and more time with the paperwork. I would stay late and be admonished for closing the store late or punching out late. When I had my own business in direct sales, my husband and secretaries would say – you need to spend some time on your paperwork. It’s funny, once I became ill and couldn’t work, how much time and money I’ve spent putting my thoughts about life and my relationship with God on paper!
Your Quality of Life Matters – to God and because it matters to God it matters to me. Quality of Life includes body, mind and spirit. In the book “Praying Our Way Through Stress: Drawing Wisdom from the Lord’s Life and Prayer” I have a brief chapter about the Sermon on the Mount. The first line of that famous Sermon is ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’ Jesus came to fill us up in spirit – he commissioned the disciples to feed their bodies.
More and more as I age and study the Scriptures I believe that the story about the divided house not being able to stand is about individual people as well as groups. Can a house divided stand? No, if we lack spiritual food we fall and if we lack physical food we cannot stand. We can work together with each other and with God so that we can all stand before Him one day, worthy of being called Children of God. I can only hope that my sharing these thoughts and experiences with other people will be a blessing.
Lord God, You sent your Son to stand with humanity in the middle, in the land between eternal life and eternal death, You came to deliver us from evil, to protect us from the evil one and to save us from our sins. You came to live among us to teach us about quality of life in this world. Forgive us when we fail to remember your lessons and when we fall. Thank you for loving us in our weaknesses. Please pour your Holy Spirit out upon this generation that we may stand together united in body, mind and spirit on earth so we may stand before you at the end. AMEN
