Care for Some Homemade Biscuits and Gravy?

“The Christian disgraces his profession more often in prosperity than in adversity.” – C.H. Spurgeon

For the past three years, I have been privileged to pastor a church in an RV and manufactured home community called Midway Estates. Some people live there by choice and others because that is all they can afford. Still others – like the dozens of “snowbirds” who flock there each winter – seek shelter from the cold Canadian winters.

There is one thing that the vast majority of these precious people have in common: because they are not rich in the world’s possessions, they tend to focus on the things that really matter such as their faith in God and their friendships with others. There isn’t a day that goes by where someone isn’t driving someone else to a doctor’s appointment, dropping off a homecooked meal, or stopping by for a visit… and an encouraging word.

Folks that live in a mansion behind a 10-foot high security fence may enjoy some of the temporal pleasures that this world has to offer, but they will never experience that knock on the door from a neighbor who just made a big batch of biscuits and gravy and saved you some… or the couple down the street who sees you out walking your dogs and insists that you come on in and sit a spell. You simply can’t put a price tag on those kinds of relationships.

Here is how Charles Spurgeon describes the downside of worldly affluence…

“It is a dangerous thing to be prosperous. The crucible of adversity is a less severe trial for the Christian than the place of prosperity. There are many who know ‘how to be brought low’ who have not learned ‘how to abound.’ When they are set upon the top of a pinnacle their heads grow dizzy, and they are ready to fall.”

“When we have plenty of God's providential mercies, it often happens that we have but little of God's grace, and little gratitude for the blessings we have received. We are full, and we forget God: Satisfied with earth, we are content to do without heaven.”

“Rest assured, it is harder to know how to be full than it is to know how to be hungry--so desperate is the tendency of human nature to pride and forgetfulness of God.”

“Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” Proverbs 30:8-9 (NIV)

- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President