Today is Budget day for our Federal Government. The Speech from the Throne will tell us what we can and can’t expect in terms of taxes and programmes.  It should be a great budget as the government had to be prorogued in order to prepare it. (Oh ya, there was that whole Olympics thing going on too!)

This past Sunday was our Congregational Annual meeting. I have attended enough church meetings that they seldom surprise me. At one point, I leaned over to the person next to me and whispered, “I could have scripted this meeting!” Despite the 23 pages in The Annual Report that report and reflect on the ministry of the congregation for the past year the only pages we really discussed were the pages with the financial report. What people seem to want to talk about is money!

Jesus really understood that. Jesus talked more about money than anything else. He knew the seductive power of wealth. He knew the hold that money can have over us.

This year’s United Church Lenten study is called “There’s No ATM in the Wilderness”. I know a number of you are reading the daily reflections. Yesterday’s reading began with the startling (well, startling to me anyway) information that “According to the Bank of Canada, Canadian consumers now owe $752.1 billion, up 36 % in the past 10 years. Statistics Canada says 47 % of us spend more than we earn.”

Stewardship of money is a challenging concern for many of us. Our congregation struggles with the reality of not meeting our monthly expenses while having a great deal of money invested in savings for that proverbial ‘rainy day’. On Sunday we, as a congregation, looked seriously at how to be responsible with the money that has been entrusted to us, how to be prepared for the rainy day but also how to free up money to do ministry now. Some changes were made in how we will manage our money. I think we are on the right track.

Is money an issue for you as you try to live faithfully?  Do you see your money as a means to an end, a blessing to be shared or a source of temptation? Maybe it’s all of the above!