My ponderances are bent toward wealth tonight. Wealth in poverty and poverty in wealth. It stuck me that wealth can be just as much and maybe even more dangerous than poverty. That may sound ironic, or absurd, given the deficiencies I’m entrenched in, but in fact, I think it’s these very contexts that cause me to believe these peculiar thoughts might just have some truth to them.

Every night I stroll by the Nile and watch the sunset. (Parts of this are as picturesque as they sound…most aren’t). I’m always amazed at how different my thought-scenery is, given an almost identical scheduling, path and duration. Tonight I enjoyed the accompaniment of Hagar’s Nimrod piece on repeat, which can’t help but add a shot of contemplative caffeine with every new listening. I went to the LA Symphony in the Spring and fell in love with this piece. I’ve probably listened to it 100 times and it still astounds me. Anyway, I’ll often spend this time praying and tonight myself doing so for friends and family back home. A lot of my requests centered on God revealing things and requesting an openness from the person to truly be open to God’s will in a particular area.” Essentially, I realized I was praying for rich people (don’t let me escape from this requests) to see their poverty. For wealthy hands, circumstances and personas, to see denials and thus discoveries of a poor heart. A naked heart. And a bounty of actual wealth in the facing of this naked poverty. I prayed against brokenness masked in togetherness. Spiritual need, justified as trials treated as “just life.” Guilt, hurt, or desire, masked by control, discipline, or fear. You get the point…I found my prayers asking for an openness toward a plethora of wealthy looking mirages.

When I pray Africa, the orphanage, homeless, or “the poor,” on the other hand, I find no question in discerning their need. I find little hindrance, or hesitancy, to ask, knock, or receive of God’s provision regarding their life. Good and bad, pure and evil, needed and not needed don’t carry as much of a tension, or subliminal messaging here. Poverty, then, seems to aid in a true understanding of the Gospel, whereas wealth has the wretched ability to mute it. To explain our situation as well, independent, safe, healthy, good, rich, secure, guarded, sustained, happy, normal, compassionate, reasoned, balanced, popular, or covered (this was off the top of my head…I’m sure there’s a range of others to supplement this list). Or maybe more scary, wealth has the ability to think our situation ‘should’ be well, independent, safe, healthy, good, rich, secure, guarded, sustained, happy, normal, compassionate, reasoned, balanced, popular, or covered. When the reality is, it’s not. And we’re not.

I live in one of the wealthiest, “make-up-driven” hot spots in the world. L.A. is known for dreams, fame and fortune. But after a year under its residency, I’d be the first to say no matter how rich this city is in externalities, it takes quite a search to find a community, family, or individual who’s rich inwardly. (This goes for my hometown of Atlanta, too, but sadly I would say the struggle there falls more in the scene of local churches, than communities, to find glistenings of inward wealth). In general, people in LA function in isolation. They function by way of strengths, appearances and accentuated highs. But if you can edge through conversations of the next script, or newest diet, nine times out of ten (probably an understatement) you’ll find an empty soul. You’ll find a person who has learned to exist out of beauty that lasts only as long as the make-up does. And hear me say I’m speaking to the whole of first world, progressively thinking, cultures of wealth right now and simply using L.A. because a) I live there and b) in theory, at least, it’s the epitome of this conversation.

I am not saying that as the rich (if you are reading this in any fashion, you are considered of relative wealth), we should become poor. “While certain individuals may be given a specific call to poverty, in general, being poor is one of the poorest ways to help the poor. Further, I have yet to find anyone who was the better person simply for being poor,” (Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 199). What I am saying, however, is that I think it’s a fair consideration to take a closer look at our wealth and the pockets of what that wealth is holding, hiding and allowing us to hide-out in. “As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches but only in God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good deeds: liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed.” 1 Timothy 6:17-19, RSV

“Father, I want to know Thee, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou may enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no more night there. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” –A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God, closing prayer, end of chapter 2).