Essay / Theology

Dollars Have Wings (Prayer for the Offering)

flying dollar Lord, dollars fly away. Wealth makes wings for itself. We put money where we want it put, but it doesn’t stay put. Our money blows away, rolls away, goes up in smoke, and vanishes.

We try to keep control of it, but we keep finding it beyond our control. This money is not up to us: it’s up to what somebody decides to pay us; it’s up to the kind of job we can find; it’s up to the free market with its invisible hand turning the invisible wheel of the economy; it’s up to the Dow Jones Average, which is down; it’s up to interest rates and real estate and income tax and cars not breaking down. It’s up to kids not getting sick and us not catching a bad case of that Southern California flu of buying more than we can afford.

O Lord! We cannot trust ourselves with our own money, and we sure don’t trust anybody else with it. These dollars of ours have wings on them, Lord. There is no cage or trap we can build which is strong enough to hold this money.

It’s getting away from us. It’s making us nervous. Our only hope is that some of our money flies into your hands; that some of it flies back to you, the giver of all good gifts. Our livelihood flows from you in the first place, Lord: Let our money and time and energy fly back to you. Use this money to make us wise with all money, with all energy, and with all time.

Our hearts go where our money goes, so please take as much of our money as it takes to get ahold of our hearts. Lord, receive this offering. Give our dollars wings and speed them to help our overseas missionaries, our mission trip to Mexico, our own church budget here at Grace, and the building fund for the bigger building we need for ministry.

We wish we had one thousand tongues to sing your praise, great Redeemer, and we wish we had one thousand dollars to give, along with our hearts, to you. But if the whole realm of nature were ours, that would not be enough.

Receive this offering, and receive also our prayers. Catch our prayers and hold onto them. Catch our dollars, which are flying away from us anyway, whether we give them to you or not. We ask this not in our own names, but in the name of Jesus, who was rich and became poor for us.

Amen.

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