We are the rich.

Pastor Dan's sermon this morning sort of bowled me over.

It was a sermon about money, but not a sermon in which the preacher was asking for money (for himself or the church). It was a sermon about how greed is a form of impurity in our hearts just like sexual impurity.

I've spent so much time on eBay and other sites, looking for things which for some reason I really really want. Often, these things will, I think, help me fulfill God's calling on my life as a musician. And yet, the desire for these things sometimes takes over my heart and my time way more than it should.

Pastor Dan gave us statistics that I'd heard before about how we really are the world's richest people, but this time it hit me more than ever before. There really are millions of people in the world who don't even have clean water or a place to sleep. As he said, if they were standing in front of us telling us their story, we would probably empty our pockets and give what we could to help them.

Toward the end of the sermon, he brought up the question posed to Jesus in Luke chapter 5 verse 29: "And who is my neighbor?"

Then Pastor Dan had us do something really unusual. We we to pair up and check the tag on our partner's shirt to see where the shirt was made. He the asked us to, as much as possible, shout out one at a time where our shirts were made. The list was astounding. We heard places like:

"Vietnam!"
"Laos!"
"Alabama!"
"Brunei!"
"Asia!"
"Hong Kong!"

My shirt was made in Honduras.

And then Pastor Dan ended his sermon with: "The person who made your shirt is your neighbor." And during the final prayer, he asked us all to say a silent prayer for the person who made our shirt.

In this country, in the Western world even, we have so much of the wealth of the world. And we--and I--spend so much of it on ourselves...on myself. We have got to do something about this greed in our hearts.

To get an idea of how rich you are, visit www.globalrichlist.com (if you are from the USA, be careful to change the currency from pounds to dollars). To hear the entire amazing sermon, check out Calvary's website at www.calvarysc.org or click here to go straight to the sermon audio page and listen to the sermon for February 18.