Contemplative Bible Reading

Acts 19:23-24 (New Living Translation)

23 About that time, serious trouble developed in Ephesus concerning the Way. 24 It began with Demetrius, a silversmith who had a large business manufacturing silver shrines of the Greek goddess Artemis. He kept many craftsmen busy.

Here is Demetrius. He works with silver to fashion all sorts of things include statues of the Greek goddess Artemis. Demetrius is a business man who employs many other silversmiths and assorted craftsmen. He is responsible for the wages of many persons. Those persons feed, clothe, and house their families from their wages.

This is life a few thousand years ago. This is life today. Persons have jobs. The jobs may not be that important or good in any other way, but the jobs mean a person can care for their family. That is important and godly.

With Demetrius, however, jobs and life collide with the spread of the good news that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God and deserves our worship—our undivided worship. That last part—undivided worship—puts a dent into the wages of all those silversmiths and craftsmen who made little Artemis statues.

Now what do we do? There are simple, basic economic choices (make other things from silver, diversify your skills, etc.), but there are spiritual choices that sometimes aren’t so simple. “I’ll stop making Artemis statues and hope that I find something else. In the mean time, I hope my family doesn’t starve. Well, maybe that won’t work.”

Obvious example, right? I don’t think so. Many of us work for organizations that do things we don’t like. Many of the big bosses in our lives do things we don’t like. Many of our customers do things we don’t like. It becomes complicated quickly. How to we walk away from the world and become independent of all these complicated decisions?

We don’t because we can’t. We live here in this world while we yearn for something else. We can struggle with every little thing. We can also trust in God for every big thing. Let’s go with God.