Day 21 Empty, Away

53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. Luke 1:53 English Standard Version

I do not think of myself as rich. I consider myself comfortably middle class. I do not live ostentatiously. I drive a truck that is seventeen years old, and Christy drives a van that is fourteen years old. I live in an older, but nice, neighborhood. Our house was built in 1979, the year I graduated from high school. We give at our place of worship and a few other charities. My income meets my needs and lets me do most of the things I want…read good books, drink good coffee, and listen to jazz in the evenings. The rich live much differently…right?

Perhaps not. If you look worldwide, I’m richer than 98% of the world. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve traveled the world enough to know that it is true. Compared to almost everyone else in the world, I enjoy extravagant wealth. I like to look at others judgmentally. They are rich and should do more; but in reality, I am rich and should do more. In my comfortable chair, I read scripture and assume that when God speaks about the rich, He’s really talking either about or to someone else. Not true. He’s talking to me. My position in the upper 2% of wealthy people in the world means that the second half of Luke 1:53 is directed toward me. Advent is largely about Jesus coming to the poor and downtrodden, not me. Spiritually speaking, I’m impoverished and need the Gospel, but I still cannot escape the fact that I am rich and in danger of being sent empty, away. How often have I, like the rich man in the Lazarus story, walked past the poor? Empty, away. The knowledge of my wealthy status makes me reconsider passages in which the Lord speaks harshly to the rich. I do not like those sad, sad words, “empty, away.” Christmas and the advent stories remind me that I enjoy manifold blessings from God and ought to share the wealth.