Hebrews 13:1-6: in context

The letter to the Hebrews closes with practical exhortations: let brotherly love continue; show hospitality to strangers; remember those in prison and the mistreated as if you shared their chains; honor marriage. And then a word about money and contentment: be free from the love of money, and content with what you have, for God has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. So we can say with confidence, the Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?

The counsel about money is grounded in a surprising place. Be free from the love of money, the writer says, and content with what you have, and then he gives the reason: for God has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. The antidote to greed and to anxiety about money is not more money, but the assurance of God's abiding presence. Why do we love money, cling to it, worry over it, always want more? Largely because we look to it for security, for the assurance that we will be provided for and safe. And the writer relocates that security: you do not need to grasp after money for your security, because you have something better and surer, the promise of God never to leave or forsake you. The one who has God, and God's promise never to abandon him, can afford to hold money loosely and to be content, because his security does not rest on his bank balance but on the presence of God. This is the root of true contentment and freedom from the love of money: not indifference to provision, but confidence that our ultimate security is in God, who has promised never to leave us. If God will never forsake us, then we need not clutch at wealth as though it were our security; we can be content with what we have, generous with it, free from the anxious grasping that the love of money breeds. And from this same assurance flows a freedom from fear: the Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me? The one who knows that God will never leave him can face both scarcity and threat with a settled confidence, content and unafraid, because his security is in a God who has promised never to abandon him. Contentment and courage grow from the same root: I will never leave you nor forsake you. Grasp that promise, and the love of money loosens its grip, and fear loses its power.

Do I look to money for my security, clutching and worrying and always wanting more, or can I ground my contentment where Hebrews grounds it, in God's promise never to leave or forsake me, so that, secure in his abiding presence, I hold money loosely, content with what I have and free from both greed and fear?