¹¹ So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?
                                                            -Luke 18:11-12
 
Your money isn’t real money. It has temporary, limited value that is deceptive in its promises and relatively short in its reach.
 
Jesus is telling us that the decisions we make with the play money we have in this life are being watched closely. If we can’t figure out how to steward the play money well in this temporary and fleeting life, who’s going to trust us with real riches in the life eternal?
 
Jesus talks about money more than any other person in the Bible. This is in large part because money is one of God’s biggest competitors for your heart.  We were made to worship God, love people, and use money. At our worst our tendency is to love money, use people and ignore God altogether.
 
And so Jesus is constantly pushing his original hearers (and us!) to break the spell of money over us and to see through the false promises of it. 
 
Here, Jesus tells us that our passions (to riff off of C.S. Lewis) aren’t too strong but they’re far, far too weak.  We are fooling about with trifles and play things, Monopoly money, when real money is waiting for us just ahead. Eternal joys and riches are being offered to us but we’d rather settle for disposable trinkets and knick-knacks.  We are far too easily pleased.
 
And so as we close our week in this famously difficult passage, we invite you hear the good news: this world is not the end.  There are greater things to come. You and I are called to spend our resources in light of those greater things.
 
Whatever resources you’ve got, Jesus invites you to go to work investing them in the eternal. This is Monopoly money.  The game we’re playing now matters, but it is passing and temporary and it’ll all be put away someday soon.
 
God wants to entrust us with true, eternal riches.  Let’s go to work with the play money we’ve got today in such a way that he’ll delight to give us true riches just when we get to our true home.
 
Spend some time today releasing and surrendering all your resources to the Lord. Find a way to give something away to someone around you: pay for the person behind you in the drive-through, give a small donation to a favorite non-profit, buy lunch for the person at the office who’s going through a difficult time, make a meal for someone who’s home sick.