Oh dear.
There seems to be an awful lot of it about at the moment and the situation simply seems to be getting worse.
It’s horrible to be in debt. It keeps on cropping up in your mind when you are just trying to get on with things. It gets in the way of those little treats you’ve been used to. It messes with your fun and – mebbe wors of all – it feels really very lonely.
So why have we got this problem?
At the moment we’ve got it in the West because we’ve lived for too long beyond our means with more going out than coming in. This has been made worse because financial institutions have had loads of money pouring onto wholesale money markets from the developing economies of India and China, and (keen to turn an extra buck) have no doubt loaned it cheaply to many of us who couldn’t afford to borrow it.
But at the end of the day, we’ve been sufficiently discontent with what we have to BORROW what liked like easy money to try to tackle our dissatisfaction. We haven’t generally got satisfaction by the things we’ve spent the borrowed money on, but it has brought us the worry and the loneliness of indebtedness.
It was a wise man who wrote
“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
Philippians 4:11-13
And … ” 6 But godliness with contentment is great gain.
7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.
8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.
9 People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.” (1 Timothy 6:6-9)
And: “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
And where will we get wisdom from to live like that?
welshrev 