Psalm Meditation 1332 ¶First Sunday After Christmas ¶December 28, 2025 ¶Psalm 49 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2049&version=NRSVUE ¶It is pretty common to wish that we could be rich. Some even say that being rich would not change them. I have come to believe that this is true of each of us. Money does not have the power to make us different, it accents who we are. People who are selfish use their money for themselves, those who are wasteful will waste a lot of money as quickly as they wasted a little, people who are generous will be as generous with a lot as they are with a little, and bullies will bully people with their money. Some will be a bit more lavish in their types of spending, and some will take John Wesley’s advice, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” ¶The psalmist tells us that money doesn’t change things for very long, because each of us is going to die. No matter how much a person may have it will do them no good when they are dead. We may have an ostentatious burial place, however that will not make us any more or less alive. “Truly, no ransom avails for one’s life; there is no price one can give to God for it.“ People will be impressed with our riches while we live and may well forget about us soon if all we had to offer was riches without relationships. ¶“Mortals cannot abide in their pomp; they are like the animals that perish.” We can live a lavish lifestyle for as long as we live, however, once we die it no longer matters how grand our lives were, what will matter is what kind of relationships we leave behind. Will we be in the hearts and minds of those we leave behind, as well as in the heart and mind of God, or will we be a warning to others that wealth will only buy things? ¶December 22, 2025 ¶LCM