October 28

"Did not God choose them that are poor as to the world to be rich in faith?" James 2:5

The goal and reward of temporal poverty is eternal enrichment. God never intended that tribulation and poverty should have no fruit. His purpose is that all pressure should lead to enlargement and that all poverty should lead to wealth. His destiny for his people is not continuous poverty. Straightness and poverty are not an end; they are the means to an end.

There is much that we do not understand in John's revelation of the New Jerusalem, but we do see there a city of infinite wealth. There is, however, not a nugget of gold in that city which has not been tried in a furnace of affliction, not a precious stone which has not passed through the fires, and not a pearl that has not been born of suffering. To be "rich in faith" is surely justified, therefore.