God's Economy

Isaiah 55:8-9 speaks of a distinct difference between the way God operates and the way humans operate: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (NASB). While I cannot understand God's thoughts, I cannot help but compare the way he operates with the way human leaders operate countries. In my favorite dictionary, Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, ‘economy’ is defined as follows:

1. “Primarily, the management, regulation and government of a family or the concerns of a household.”  2. “A frugal and judicious use of money; that management which expends money to advantage, and incurs no waste; frugality in the necessary expenditure of money. It differs from parsimony, which implies an improper saving of expense. Economy includes also a prudent management of all the means by which property is saved or accumulated; a judicious application of time, of labor, and of the instruments of labor.”

Today, the economies of many countries are suffering, but God’s economy is not and will never be. Unlike human rulers, God sits above the circle of the earth (Is. 40:22) and does not have to worry, connive, manipulate, or prop up an economy that is monetary. He has no need for frugality, for all the cattle on a thousand hills are his (Psalm 50:10). Ironically, the gold that our world economies value so much paves the streets of heaven, where we will someday walk. God tells us that the material things we value here will not be important there, so we need to be striving to live according to his economy and make sure that our treasures are stored in the eternal vaults of heaven (Matt. 6:20) rather than the banks of men.