Wealth & Poverty

Since preaching from Ecclesiastes two years ago in Sipitang, I had wondered and reflected on this theme of wealth and poverty in the Bible. In Solomon's book of Ecclesiastes, a total of six times, the author enjoined that his readers should just enjoy (eat and drink) the fruits of one's labour. It is surely a major theme in Ecclesiastes, perhaps reflecting the paradox of pessimism (vanity vanity all is vanity) of life on earth. Thus, there is nothing better but to enjoy one's labour while one can and while one is still healthy (and alive). A friend of mine when I told him about my Departure Points, a semi-memoirs of my life and ministry for the first 25 years in the Lord's work, said that he would also write his story, but alas within months he was called home by the Lord. My good pastor friend was only a couple of years older than me. There is one who keeps on accumulating and not enjoying the fruits of his labour and like Ecclesiastes says all his wealth will become someone's else when he passes on or when his health fails him.

King Solomon, being wise, says that it is a gift of God to enjoy the fruits of one's labours. He was surely reflecting towards the end of his life as a king who had everything - power, money, wealth, and women to his heart's content. But how is it that the question of wealth and poverty is still one of the unresolved conundrums in the Bible? Perhaps one can draw broad strokes and say, in the OT, if God's blessings are with you, you will become wealthy or rich or hold many possessions while in the NT, the picture is slightly more complex with a majority of believers being poor in the first century AD, but not a few wealthy patrons and benefactors as well. We have the Barnabases who sold lands for the benefit of his poorer brothers in Christ and the elders in the pastoral epistles were mainly well-to-do people who could host house churches or feed some of the poorest of the poor who attend worship without food or dinner (1 Cor 11). Then, you have Lydia, the hostess in Philippi and even apostle John would not be poor if Jesus entrusted his mother to John's care at the foot of the cross. This morning I was reading about Abraham (I had started since yesterday to read the Spetuagintal OT or the LXX) and Abraham acquired possessions along the way, in Haran, then in Egypt and later back in Canaan. Gen 13:2 says that Abraham was very rich in livestock and in silver and gold. His son, Isaac and his grandson, Jacob were also very rich which means, Israel's ancestors came from wealthy families. I suppose in the ancient times when one's life depends on subsistence from working the land (farmer or soil-tilling), a season of drought or too much rain would bring famine and it could last two or three years which made Naomi's family to flee Israel to Moab and returned to Israel when times became better. What about us in the 3rd decade of the 21st century AD in Sabah, Malaysia? Sabah, though rich in natural resources, are rated 2nd or 3rd poorest State in Malaysia (out of 13 States) and a vast majority of people are what the government terms as B40 (bottom 40%) earning less than RM5,000 per household. When I returned from Sabah, I was earning less than half of the bottom 40% with my wife, a full-time homemaker. I have always identified with the poor of the land, especially with my fellow pastors of which 95% are surely within the B40 group with a few exceptions whose wives earn a good salary making them the M40 (middle-class 40%). But God has blessed me as He had promised as I took the step of faith to return to Sabah. I don't think it was my savings (6 years' wages in Singapore) for it is not much by any measurement but neither it is insignificant compared to what I used to have before my sojourn in Singapore. Ultimately, it is the power of God to bless His servants who obey His voice and His faithfulness to His promise when he said to me, like He said to Jacob when God commanded him to return to his homeland - "I will be with you and I will deal well with you".