Pay who you owe
Day 355, Friday, Aug. 1
Luke 19:28 – 21:4
Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Jesus came to conquer death, but unfortunately taxes remain.
In one of the times that the religious leaders tried to trap Jesus into saying something that would offend the Roman authorities, they asked him if Jews should pay taxes to Rome. Jesus took a coin and asked who was pictured on it. When the answer was that it was Caesar’s picture and inscription, he said, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Money is part of living in the world and is used under the world’s rules which, unfortunately, include taxes.
The second part of what he said is at least equally as important, though.
If we pay taxes to Caesar because his image is on the coin, what do we owe to God?
The answer to that goes all the way back to the early part of the first book of the Bible, in Genesis 1:27, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
If the coin bears the image of Caesar, then the self, both body and soul, bears the image of God himself.
If the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears his image, then we belong to God because we bear his image.

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Friday meditation

Job 14:1-12
“Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble. They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure. Do you fix your eye on them? Will you bring them before you for judgment? Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one!
A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed. So look away from him and let him alone, till he has put in his time like a hired laborer.
“At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant. But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more. As the water of a lake dries up or a riverbed becomes parched and dry, so he lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, people will not awake or be roused from their sleep.

Prayer focus
God, we thank you for imprinting your image upon and within us. Let us give you ourselves without reservation.