What the Fool Lacks

“A man with an evil eye hastens after wealth and does not know that want will come upon him.” Proverbs 28:22

Want – Cindy Lauper vocalized the culture’s mantra: “Money fixes everything.” If you allow the world to prescribe your antidote to want, you would certainly believe her. Everywhere we look, this world bows down to the twin-faced god of time and money. How comforting it is to hear that my only real problem with life can be solved with more exchange commodity.
The Bible, the most realistic book ever written, has a different perspective. How tragic it is to read the Bible and discover that no amount of accumulated “want” protection can save me. No wonder human beings reject God’s word. It’s just too pessimistic. We prefer self-fulfilling fantasy. Even if we don’t have enough to stop the wants, we want to think that we have the answer. When we are blind, it’s quite easy to follow the blind.
There’s only one problem. God designed the world to work His way, not ours. Accumulation of “want” protection never works because God designed dependence into this world. There is no amount of anything that I can collect on the human side of the equation that will ultimately remove my dependence. To live as though life depends on me is to be a fool.
If I am to live in accordance with the grain of the universe, I must start by subjecting my foolhardy myths to serious reality checks. I must put aside forever the temptation to think that I am in control of my life. Once I see the reality of my dependence, I am given but two choices: I can acknowledge God’s gift to me or I can throw myself on the fate of random chance. Either God gives or life is a crap-shoot. And if life is just a matter of luck, all odds are against me. The only logical choice is suicide, to end it while I am not yet in ruin or pain. The fool’s logic can lead only to self-termination. That’s why Solomon can say that a man who chases wealth as the solution to life’s problems is hopelessly deluding himself. In time, kaw-sere catches all of us. Cemeteries are merely monuments to my lack of independent self-existence.
You and I are in desperate need of the God of lo’ ekaw-sere, the God of “not lacking”. Whenever we forget this basic fact of life, we are headed toward the fool’s paradise, a place of gift-wrapped tombstones. The real message of life is simple: choose dependence, and thank God that He cares.