A Nobel Prize
A newspaper printed the obituary of millionaire Alfred Nobel, saying his fortune came from the death of others. Nobel invented dynamite. Fortunately, Nobel wasn’t actually dead, and when he read the newspaper’s obituary, he was horrified!
Nobel got a chance to do something few of us can do: he saw his life from the viewpoint of death. It rattled him, and he didn’t like what he saw. So he took his fortune and set it aside into the Nobel Prize foundation, and today “Nobel” is famously associated with excellence in the arts and sciences. People are surprised to discover that Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite.
Have you ever asked yourself, “How will they write my obituary?”
What we do with our money speaks tellingly what we did with our lives. Money is “compressed life”. When we give it to God’s purpose, we’re saying, “Here is my time, my effort, my life’s blood!”
God offers us a glimpse of our obituary, if we are willing:
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Ephesians 2:10
This verse immediately follows the famous passage, “For by grace you have been saved…” because there’s a connection between our salvation and our destiny with greatness. Do we make that connection in our daily lives? We’ve been saved by God’s grace in order that our lives might be transformed from meaningless wandering and self-indulgence into a life of testimony to the glory and beauty of the Kingdom of God.
Alfred Nobel was no fool. He took his fortune and made a connection with greatness. As saints, we have far greater opportunity with our wealth, as Jesus said:
“And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will receive you into the eternal dwellings.” Luke 16:9
As God’s beloved children, we are stewards, as Jesus continues:
“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you? And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Luke 16:10-13
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“What we do with our money speaks tellingly what we did with our lives. Money is “compressed life”” – You’re very right, we spend most of our lives away from our family and loved ones earning $. It’s such a temporary thing. But, when we use it for God’s purposes it transforms from a temporary thing to something that has the potiential to effect eternity. Wouldn’t we want our hard earned cash to be put into a good investment? How about a company who’s return on investment will be through the roof? Only God’s Kingdom can deliever these kind of profits.