WHAT MONEY CAN’T BUY

By REVEREND TONY ZEKVELD

At times, a package may arrive at your doorstop. On it are words written in bold: Fragile. Handle With Care! This also applies to relationships. The husband-wife relationship or the parent-child relationship, for example, can easily shatter. How do you put relationships back together again?

In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, in the unquenchable thirst for money, prestige and status often come at the expense of nurturing long-term relationships. It’s not something you can buy with money and gifts – try as you might. You can’t throw a few dollars at it and expect love and respect in return. It doesn’t work that way.

Too often we think in terms of houses, not homes; jobs, not vocations; the screen, not the table. Building relationships takes time, commitment, and energy. Relationships are a gift from God to cultivate, cherish, and hold on to into the next generations.

But there’s a problem. We are broken people, broken by sin. We are born that way and so relationships easily break. Sin and selfishness get in the way. And throwing money at it doesn’t make the greed and selfishness go away. Manipulating or using relationships to serve our own personal ends is egregious. It’s not love no matter how much we try to make it look loving! It alienates.

Our alienation in relationships stems from a deeper problem: our alienation from God. He made us to live in relationship with Him. We broke our relationship with God by disobeying Him and, therefore, we experience the broken relationships in marriage and in the family.

But there is hope. God came to reconcile broken people like us to Himself through Jesus Christ. And He didn’t buy that with money but with His own life. 

That is what Good Friday and Easter are all about. Christ came to give His own life, paying the price for sin, so that by trusting in His finished sacrifice for us, we are reconciled to God. The Bible says, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”

It’s when we are reconciled to God through Christ, that we are at home with God. Then we can also build homes, truly cultivate and build relationships, not serving our own ends, but serving God.

That, money can’t buy!