“Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world — wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important — has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him.” ~ Eugene H. Peterson
Have you ever wondered why there are so many con men out there? Have you ever wondered why there is a plethora of scam phone calls and emails? Sadly, it’s quite simple: we can be so easily duped. Yes, that’s the sad reality. We can be suckers for the “big win”. If someone promises instant riches, even if a person feels it’s probably not right, they might go for it anyway just so they don’t miss out.
P.T. Barnum has had the phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” attributed to him though there is no certainty that he said it. But, with the flash and glamour that he used to lure people in for his performances, it’s believable. He may not have said it, but he operated his enterprise based upon that assumption.
The world knows us quite well. It knows that we are suckers for empty promises of wealth, power, and prestige. If we think it can come our way, we are prone to buying into it. What we actually buy into, however, is a lot of grief. How many people’s lives have been ruined by the promising scam? While not having exact numbers, it is definitely a lot. If it were not, scams and cons would not continue. Obviously, they are profitable for those who propose them.
When we hear of people who get suckered into a scam and lose everything, we tend to think about how gullible they were and say that we would never fall for that. Guess what? We fall for empty promises more often than we realize. Oh, we may not give up all of our life’s savings to some scammer. We are in jeopardy, however, of giving up our lives to the empty promise of the world. If we buy into the world and what it says it can give us, we run the risk of ignoring our true reward: God Himself.
Don’t let the world sucker you away from God today. Instead, hold firm in your faith.
FAITH ACTION: Let go of anything that keeps you from growing closer to the Lord today.
Remember, Fridays of Lent are Days of Abstinence from meat and meat products