On Sunday, October 31st, I’m being ordained as a bi-vocational minister, but that doesn’t mean the business column is ending.
Quite the opposite.
If I’ve learned anything in the past few years it has been just how interconnected life is. You may think spirituality has no place on Wall Street, but I can tell you it does.
Not all of us will agree on religion—that’s no surprise because a lot of us don’t agree on politics either. Opinions are like belly buttons; we all got one.
But when I sit down with clients and discuss money, we usually end up talking about the bigger picture—usually a longer timeline for goals or a bigger context for priorities.
But sometimes we talk about the really big picture and consider the day they will leave this planet.
That is, after all, a core service of a financial counselor: estate planning. That’s a really nice way of talking about planning for one’s death.
It’s not an easy conversation, but I have found that the more comfortable you are with it, the more stable you are as a person, the more conviction you have in decisions, the more bold you are about priorities.
Spiritual health precedes emotional health, without which life can be sabotaged.
So when we find ourselves in that bigger context, life means a lot more than we think.
Making sound financial decisions is a discipline like eating healthy or exercising, and it does breed results that are deeply satisfying, and since there is a spiritual component to us, we can’t address every problem as if it just needed more discipline or more reminders.
Sometimes problems present themselves that are unsolvable, outside an act of God, a breakthrough of divine power, a signal of His love for us, and we are faced with the reality that we have to deal with Him, somehow, and someway.
But how often do we actually face Him?
Or, sometimes problems present themselves to people who claim to know and love God, but who exhibit fear and shame, lives defined by reservations and scarcity.
That’s when it becomes my challenge to hold up a mirror, as kindly as possible, and help them see what they can’t see, to give them freedom (not just financially).
The Scripture says God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, He clothes the Lillies of the field, and He feeds the birds of the air—how much more will He care for us?
He is a God of abundance, but if you still hold onto your fear and scarcity, what you need isn’t a financial counselor but an interaction with Him who holds the stars in place, who measured out the oceans with his palms.
The same goes for you and your career. People don’t just pay you to do your job. That is the transaction, yes, but that isn’t why you’re on the planet.
The transaction is just a means of relationship: a cause to bring people together.
You’re here to go above and beyond for your neighbors, to take the skills you have and find ways to bless each other. After all, you yourself have been blessed with these skills—you couldn’t really earn them on your own. You can’t even make your heart beat.
What I am saying is we take a moment to consider from whence we came, for whom we are made, and to where we must go.
The meaning of life comes from this, and the quietness of these questions alone is a ministry.
“Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.” ~Rabbi Jonathan Sacks