Mourning For Money?

Yesterday was "Mourn For Your Money" Day. The idea is to commemorate the money being withheld from your paychecks in order to pay your taxes. Yet, when I consider the idea of today, I can't help but think of one of the final scenes in the powerful film Schindler's List.

Oskar Schindler, having rescued 1100 people from concentration camps, is surrounded by those he helped. His Jewish friends give him papers to help flee the country, and a ring -- a token of their appreciation for all he has done.

"I could have got more out," he laments. "If I'd made more money. I threw away so much money."


Here was a man who saved the lives of 1100 people. Generations, as he is reminded, who will survive because of what he did. Yet, he sees, he could have gotten one more. Just one. And he mourns, not for the money lost, but for the life that money represented.

Jesus reminds us often of the value of money. In Matthew 6:19-21, He tells us,

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Money is a tool we have. And like all tools, its value isn't in what it is, but in what it can do. There are children starving, at home and abroad. There are people going without. There are countless people who don't know Christ. Yet we are blessed with the tools to accomplish that and more -- if we but choose to do so. 

Even that small gold pin, Oskar Schindler remembered, could have saved just one more life. It's small. Insignificant, even. A decoration. But it could have saved a life.