Investing
2020-10-06Ecclesiastes 11:4 NIV
When we think about the word ‘investing’, we often think of something like the TV programme Dragons’ Den – rich people giving large amounts of money to help businesses, in the hope that they’ll receive even more money back in the future. We may never have those levels of money to invest, but we can use our money, time, or skills to help others.
The Bible has lots of advice about investing, which we can apply to time, money, or something else. Ecclesiastes 11 begins: ‘Ship your grain across the sea; after many days you may receive a return’ (v.1 NIV). We shouldn’t hoard our money, time, or skills; instead we should share them and use them to help others who are lacking in what we have plenty of.
We need to pray and seek God’s wisdom about any investment we make, so we can patiently hope to get back what we gave up, and maybe more, either through other people paying us back, or through God blessing us for our faithfulness. But even if we don’t get our investment back, if we’ve asked for God’s advice first, we can be happy knowing that we’re following His will and using our resources for His kingdom.
Later on in Ecclesiastes, we read: ‘Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.’ If we’re looking for external signs that it’s ‘the perfect time’ to invest, or looking for ‘the perfect situation’ to invest and help others, we’ll never do anything – there’ll always be challenges to face. But we don’t have to understand or predict what’s going to happen – we just need to seek God, ask for His wisdom on using our God-given resources, then act on what He says.