God of Money?

Do you worship money or do you worship with money? This question has been floating around in my head for the last 24 hours and yes, there is a lot of space up there. Money seems to be one of these subjects that is a main theme in our lives but yet we seem hesitant and very rarely freely talk about our struggles (i.e, lusts, desires, insecurities) about it with our friends or our loved ones. For me it is also one of the major areas that I have a hard time letting go of my control issues, when in reality what I own and possess is not do to anything I have done on my own.

It also has been the subject of many conversations I have had with friends, family, coworkers and clients lately. What with the state of our economy and the disastrous drop of the economy and how it is affecting each of us on a personal level. Yesterday morning, this reality hit a more personal level than I was expecting. I found out after our 2nd Qtr. earnings were released that there was a company wide salary reduction for all salaried employees which included a permanent base pay reduction, a freeze of any merit increases in '09 and a freeze of the company match incentive of our 401K, for a minimum of one year. What I didn't realize at the time as I was in a brief state of shock, was that our CEO made this hard decision in lieu of having to cut approx 25,000 jobs. With the average family being a four person household, this decision saved 100,000 people in this horrific economy the opportunity to avoid having a life altered in a very tragic way. Although this is not a pleasant thing to have happen and it will have an impact on our household, I truly am grateful to work for a great company and have a CEO who walks the talk. He demonstrated that he does truly care about his employees by finding a way to avoid large company wide layoff. Unfortunately, I cannot say this about many of the other high profile CEO's in corporate America today.

Ironically, last night after receiving the above listed news, we listened to last Sunday's sermon which we didn't get a chance to hear live on Sunday. The sermon was the first part of a two week series on Generosity, from 2 Corinthians 8-9. I seem to find myself shaking my head sometimes when I think about how God works by giving us the very words we need to hear at that moment (or day). Besides the question that I lead off this post with, was one that I didn't want to hear and definitely, didn't want to answer; "are you a giver or a taker?" Sadly, I know deep in my heart and my actions unfortunately show that I am indeed a taker and not a giver. It made my sad to think that I was only focused only on how my family and I would be mildly affected by this reduction in salary when there are far worse things happening to many others and not wanting to give up anything that I have. Especially at this time of year, when our God and Savior gave Himself up so that we didn't have to, why am I so focused on the very little that I am asked to give up?

As we are nearing a new year, my hope is that this coming year will be one where I can look back and see that I have become more of a giver, than a taker. Mayo Angelou once said "giving liberates the soul of the giver".