Take the Cash?  (November 1, 2015 Bulletin Article)

 

 

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”      (Matthew 6:19-21)

 

Omar Khayyam, the famous Iranian scholar, poet and author of the Rubaiyat, long ago wrote these words of advice to those of us who would live for something other than the pleasures of this life and world: “Some sigh for the prophet’s paradise to come; Ah, take the cash and let the credit go, nor heed the rumble of a distant drum.” His advice fits well alongside Isaiah’s quotation of those in eighth century B.C. Jerusalem who had rejected the Lord’s call to repentance, instead saying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” [22:13] There is a new Ponzi scheme discovered every year it seems in which someone has taken Omar’s advice to “take the cash and let the credit go.”

 

Although certainly not the first, one obvious example in Scripture of a man who lived by this axiom was Isaac’s favorite son, Esau. If you remember, Esau was a man who had a hard time learning to postpone gratification. On one particular occasion, as Esau was returning from an unsuccessful hunting trip, he met his brother Jacob tending a pot of beans. Esau was so hungry, he agreed to sell his birthright to his brother for a bowl of those beans, reasoning that if he died of hunger the birthright would be of no use to him. “Take the cash and let the credit go.” This short-sighted and undisciplined approach to life is, unfortunately, the way many people think today. It’s greatest tragedy is that we will never get to heaven unless we store something for ourselves “up in heaven” instead of eating it now.