I love the feeling of a cool plastic cup filled with coffee, creamer, and the perfect amount of ice that clangs around as I walk to class in the morning. I love the smell of the black-ice scent in my car right after I buy new air fresheners. I love the feeling of holding a new book in my hand and flipping through the pages as they glide across my thumb. I love putting on a new outfit and feeling like I just walked off the streets of New York. I think you get the idea but do you see what these all have in common? They’re all things: material, burnable, temporary, things. And do you know what is required in order to attain these things? Money.

I have a weird relationship with money. In one sense it seems to be the means in which I’m sustained in life. Money provides shelter, clothing, food, transportation, all things that seem pretty necessary and even some things that are just desired. So is money good? But wait, I’ve also seen money be the leading factor in broken relationships, lying, distrust, and other corrupt means, which all of these things are certainly bad. Do you see my dilemma?

Most of my childhood my family lived with a lack of money. We were certainly not in poverty, but we were scraping by on the bottom of middle class. We made it with the help of food stamps and the Lord’s provision (no joke). During this time I remember dreaming of what it would be like to want for nothing. To be able to go to the mall and get whatever I wanted from Libby Lu and Limited too (a 10-year-old’s shopping heaven). If only we had the money. At this time I concluded that money was exactly what I needed to fulfill this longing inside of me.

Fast forward now to my sophomore year of college. We were doing a lot better financially and I was working a campus job and making a decent amount of money. Now I’m not saying I was going on shopping sprees every weekend, but I wasn’t struggling to buy things off and on just because that Starbucks drink sounded super good, or that dress was adorable. So I could say I was living pretty comfortably. And yet, this money didn’t quench my thirst for something more. It didn’t give me joy or fulfill me in any way. It just thrusted me into a life of comfortability, numbness.

Is that really our purpose in life though? To live comfortably and without need? To live with that longing for something more and something better eating away at you as you discover that you can’t buy enough things in the world to fulfill this longing? I’m sorry, but that is not the life that I believe I was called to. In fact, That is not the life that we are called to.

So I don’t think the issue here is money… I think the issue is that we are seeking fulfillment from the wrong place. We want true joy to come from material things, and thats not what they were meant for. Material things can be enjoyed, but they are not the source of joy. This longing and desire to be fulfilled was woven into who we are, and it is meant to point us toward a greater hope. To a life where we are face to face with Christ and in our most holy and perfected state. And we can have taste of that glory now as Christ lives in and through us the more and more we get to know Him and follow His lead.

Money is a thing. A thing that is ultimately temporary. And if you hear anything, hear this: money is not ours. It is simply the means by which we are blessed and can bless others. It is not meant to be the source of our fulfillment or the means in which we find joy, that role should already be taken by the only One who can truly give us these things.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19–21

I was dreading going to some of the Bible classes that I used to look forward to And I couldn’t figure out why. I reflected on what was going on? I wasn’t stressed, and I was caught up on homework, so why was I so uneasy? Then it clicked as I sat in my New Testament Bible class hearing yet another opinion. Thats it! Opinions… I’m sick of opinions. I have heard so many views on what I should believe that it makes me sick to my stomach. I listen to podcasts, watch sermons, read Christian non fiction books, attend chapel three times a week, listen to a sermon every Sunday morning, and go to Bible classes every weekday. I am consuming so many views on the Bible and peoples opinions or interpretations on Christian subjects that it is making me sick. It has numbed me to the word and to God, because the life that comes from the word does not always come from the mouth of another human.

Now I’m not saying that God can’t speak through humans and use them as a vessel for his word, but I am saying that we are not supposed to only seek truth and our own personal convictions or beliefs from the persuading words of scholarly people.

Truth. I want truth. Everyone wants truth. And yet here we stand in a world of opinions. So what do we do? What do I do?

I hate to make this answer sound so cliche, but we have to get down on our knees, dust off our Bibles, and seek truth from the source of truth. It’s harder than it sounds though. In a college life that pushes me to go faster and faster it can be excrutiatingly hard to stop. Its like being on one of those merry-go-rounds. Someone starts to spin you and you watch the world around you slowly pick up pace. The leaves of the trees become streaks of green and all of the sudden you can’t distinguish where the ground ends and where the sky begins. It all becomes a stomach churning blur. Getting it going is easy compared to getting the spinning contraption to stop. But you can’t live your life at merry-go-round pace.

So I stuck my foot in the ground and let the gravel fill my shoes as the spinning began to slow down. I removed myself from the business of my life for a moment, sat at the feet of God, and said, “Lord, teach me. Teach me truth and how to live an authentic life devoted to you” The world doesn’t need more opinions and commercialized Christian lives, it needs authentic leaders. People who desire truth from the source, and live for the convictions they believe in. People who are willing to speak truth despite how counter cultural it could be. People who don’t seek to elevate themselves, but rather seek just to be with God. Those are the people this world needs, or should I say those are the people we need to be.

“We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From all old flower fields of the soul; And, weary seekers of the best, We come back laden from our quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read.” John Greenleaf Whittier