Quote from Forum Archives on October 21, 2010, 4:43 pm

Posted by: edwrather <edwrather@...>

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The Burning Bush Devotional
Welcome to the 2325 new subscribers since January 1, 2010!!
There were 1367 new subscribers during 2009!!
(Classic from 2002)

10.21.10

Place Your Bets

And He said to them, 'Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life
does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.' - Luke 12:15.

In a German newspaper, tennis star Martina Navratilova said that money is
the only thing that matters in the United States. She may be right. In a
survey of teen girls, it was found that for 93%, shopping was their favorite
thing to do. We also see the importance placed on money with the tremendous
increase in gambling venues. 48 states have some form of legalized gambling
including lotteries, video lottery machines, para-mutual betting, riverboat
casinos, and Indian casinos. In 1998, Americans spent $50 billion on
gambling.

We are currently in a crisis in the business world with Enron, and WorldCom
crashing and burning. But this is apparently just the tip of the iceberg,
with rumors of many more companies with accounting problems. Often, when
people speak of buying stock, they talk about it being a good bet or a bad
bet. The stock market has been used as just another gambling venue in the
1990s, and into the 21st Century. We have seen that in the name of making
money anything is permissible if you succeed; and when you are caught, as
seen with some CEOs in the hotseat, there is little contrition. Our whole
economy has been warped and perverted into the ideal of the gambler hitting
the jackpot with little regard for those who are hurt in the process.

Janet Folger who is the national director of the Center for Reclaiming
America, author, and radio/TV commentator says that the costs associated
with legalized gambling far outweigh the benefits. Folger also says, "Each
compulsive gambler disrupts the lives of between ten and seventeen other
people. So we're costing marriages. We're disrupting the lives of up to
seventeen other people. We're costing gamblers themselves their own lives;
and yet, we're pouring more and more money into promoting gambling from our
taxpayers." Folger goes on to share, "In Atlantic City, once casinos were
legalized, the crime rate more than tripled. Based on a federally funded
study, 86% of compulsive gamblers commit felony crimes to further their
addiction. This is serious stuff. It's costing people their lives. It's
costing the taxpayers money." In May of 2002, more than 200 religious
leaders sent an open letter to President Bush and Congress, urging them to
address the devastating effects of legalized gambling that they describe as
a "moral and cultural cancer."

Our lives, as Jesus points out, does not consist of how many material
possessions or how much money we have. Surely life is about more than that!
If money is the only thing that matters to a person, what a little life they
have. The more we focus in on money, and the gaining of more possessions,
the more life is taken from us. The more we focus in on the eternal things,
the more life we have. Let us seek first the Kingdom of God and His
righteousness (Matthew 6:33); and then, everything else will fall into the
proper perspective for us. When our focus is on God, we see that in the
eternal perspective money is really not all that important. We may very well
gain the whole world, but what good is the world if we lose our souls in the
process?

Copyright © 2002-2010. Ed Wrather. Permission is given for use of the
devotionals on a non-profit basis with source credited. The Burning Bush
website has been online since January 31, 1998. On June 8, 1998 the email
version of the Burning Bush Devotional was first sent. Ed Wrather began
writing devotionals in the early 1990s. The distribution of these first
devotionals was primarily through the Burning Bush Newsletter sent to prison
facilities throughout the United States and Canada.

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