Living In The Light

May 18, Counsels On Providing For The Future

Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, Which, having no captain, Overseer or ruler, Provides her supplies in the summer, And gathers her food in the harvest.
—Proverbs 6:6—8 LL 148.1

Brother and Sister B have not learned the lesson of economy. The gratification of the taste, and the desire for pleasure and display, have had an overpowering influence upon them. Small wages would be of more advantage to them than large, for they would use all as they pass along, were it ever so much. They would enjoy as they go, and then when affliction draws upon them, would be wholly unprepared. . . . Had Brother and Sister B been economical managers, denying themselves, they could ere this have had a home of their own, and besides this have had means to draw upon in case of adversity.— Testimonies for the Church, vol. 3, p. 30. LL 148.2

You have been in a business which would at times yield you large profits at once. After you have earned means you have not studied to economize in reference to a time when means could not be earned so easily, but have expended much for imaginary wants. Had you and your wife understood it to be a duty that God enjoined upon you to deny your taste and your desires, and make provision for the future instead of living merely for the present, you could now have had a competency and your family have had the comforts of life. You have a lesson to learn which you should not be backward in learning. It is to make a little go the longest way — Testimonies for the Church, vol. 2, pp. 432, 433. LL 148.3

You might today have had a capital of means to use in case of emergency, and to aid the cause of God, if you had economized as you should. Every week a portion of your wages should be reserved, and in no case touched unless suffering actual want, or to render back to the Giver in offerings to God. . . . LL 148.4

. . . [God] has given you physical and mental capabilities to acquire means; but the means you have earned have not been wisely and economically expended so as to have a margin should you be sick, and your family deprived of the means you bring to sustain them. Your family should have something to rely upon if you should be brought into straitened places.—Letter 5, 1877. LL 148.5

Further Reflection: Do you practice sound financial management of the resources that God entrusts to you? LL 148.6