Once there was a woman whose entire life was geared to acquiring things. There was always something she wanted; a new coat, a new car, diamond earrings, new hats, new dresses, new silverware, pearls, furs and baubles without end.
Her husband was a money making businessman and managed to gratify these desires. Being a man of foresight, he bought a burial plot for himself and his wife against the eventual day of their passing. He even selected tombstones and ordered the inscriptions engraved on them. On his wife's, She Died of Things; on his own, He Died Providing Them.
We American's would resent being called pagans, yet many of us are living like pagans, making material things our aim in life. "Christ does not ask a renunciation of all things material", writes columnist John R. Gunn, "but Christ does want to free us from the tyranny of things. The way to be free from that tyranny is to trust in God."
If God so clothes the grass of the field which blooms today and is thrown tomorrow into the furnace, will not He much more cloth you? O Man how little you trust Him. Do not be troubled then and cry, "What are we to eat or what are we to drink or how are we to be clothed?" Pagans make all that their aim in life. For well your Heavenly Father knows you need all that. Seek God's realm and His goodness and all that will be yours, over and above.
Men are killing themselves striving for wealth, but what satisfaction is there in being the richest man in the cemetary?