Issue 464
How much time do you spend thinking about money? This appears to be a straight forward question but, like most matters, it has a complex side.
Have you noticed that money exists in many different forms in your life and work? As you hand over a note or a coin in exchange for a tea or a coffee you will experience a different dynamic to that of clicking a button for an online transfer.
If your job involves money, you will probably relate to it as numbers on a screen or columns in a spreadsheet. A piggy bank and a merchant bank hold money very differently.
Again, you will treat it differently if it is your personal money or corporate or organisational money. We even have a term of endearment, namely “life savings” to refer to our own personal pot of the stuff.
Like you, Nehemiah had a multi layered relationship with money. As you look into his mind you will have already seen that he wants to handle money well, as was illustrated in the way he sought to resolve the injustice perpetrated on the poor by the mishandling of money. Similarly he got angry when it was not handled well.
I am also going to suggest to you that Nehemiah did not have easy thought processes about money. The fact that he missed the financial racquets that were run on his own watch and that he and his own brothers had been negligent had in the handling of their money tell us that finance was not his strong point or even the focus of his mind. He simply does not come across as a financial expert. He was a cup bearer. The job was about people and food. If Nehemiah was a financial wiz he would have more likely been placed with the treasury rather than the cup bearing team.
So maybe like you he was not a money man or woman. Look at his skills and heart. He prays, he fasts, he weeps, he plans, he leads, he appoints, he organises, he envisions and by the seventh chapter of his journal you see him establishing his beloved Jerusalem. He has registered the people and now we read a record of the cost element.
His mind shows you some processes which may be of use. First whatever your relationship to money there is no need to be focused on it. Now the financiers, bankers and accountants may be irritated by what I have just written but isn’t there a difference between money as a product and your own life savings? If money is your job then it needs to be handled well just as if it were any other product. Being concerned to maximise the quantity and handle growth will be quite legitimate but this is not the same as being obsessed with money and you probably know that better than I. “The love of money” which is “the root of all kinds of evil” is not the same as loving being a good banker. If you do work in finance may I encourage you to consider what it means for you not to be money focused in your mind.
Second, although Nehemiah did not seem to have a money mind he was wise enough to realise that his Jerusalem needed a sound financial foundation. So he has clearly enlisted others to make that so. This collaborative aspect we have seen about his mind over and over again. He knows that to get something built he needs to exhibit the cooperative mind. So you see him inviting the wealthy (who, by definition, know how at least to acquire wealth) to collaborate with those who are rich in other ways to create mutual benefit.
Nehemiah’s journal shows he had enlisted heads of families along with his own Governor’s office to generate funds and garments for the Priests. His journal also reveals that he had raised money from the entire population.
No matter what the project, how apparently other worldly or spiritual it appears to be. Attention will always need to be given to the finances. Nehemiah’s mind knew this. He also knew, however, he needed help from all those who would be blessed by the result.
Nehemiah 7:70-73
Some of the heads of the families contributed to the work. The governor gave to the treasury 1,000 darics of gold, 50 bowls and 530 garments for priests. 71 Some of the heads of the families gave to the treasury for the work 20,000 darics of gold and 2,200 minas of silver. 72 The total given by the rest of the people was 20,000 darics of gold, 2,000 minas of silver and 67 garments for priests.
73 The priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the musicians and the temple servants, along with certain of the people and the rest of the Israelites, settled in their own towns.
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Geoff Shattock
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