bible and theology on Wastefulness

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

Den som köper det han inte behöver stjäl från sig själv. He who buys what he does not need steals from himself.

Extravagant wastefulness in time might prove the most productive thing you choose for yourself.

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.

For many of us, living in excess doesn’t express itself in extremities. It doesn’t translate to tying $4,000 to balloons and releasing it into the air. It doesn’t have to amount to owning six houses (...

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone.

Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Sometimes we confuse simplicity with frugality. Frugality is another term associated with owning. A frugal person is someone who makes wise decisions with money and food. “He is frugal in his spending...

Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength... It is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less.

When we insist on doing too much, we are not only inflicting the damage of this choice on ourselves, we are sharing this damage with those we love the most.

In their book Passing the Plate (Oxford, 2008), Christian Smith and Michael Emerson introduce the phrase “discretionary obligation” as a way to understand the typical American Christian’s approach to ...

There is a danger that you will mislive—that despite all your activity, despite all the pleasant diversions you might have enjoyed while alive, you will end up living a bad life. There is, in other wo...

Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.

Medieval Dominican friar Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), in his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, specifically the fourth petition (“give us this day our daily bread”), points out several ways that our own...

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities he does not possess.

This Week's Sermon Illustration Tuesday provides some interesting data on wealth in America, compiled by the author Daniel Pink. Enjoy! Signs of Wealth in America During much of the twentieth ...

If your idleness is a complete slump, that is, indecision, fretting, worry, or due to over-feeding and physical mugginess, that is bad, terrible and utterly sterile. Or if it is that idleness which so...

Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.... Hoarding is idolatry.

The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is baref...

When Jesus warns us not to store up treasures on earth, it’s not just because wealth might be lost; it’s because wealth will always be lost. Either it leaves us while we live, or we leave it when we d...

A lack of generosity refuses to acknowledge that your assets are not really yours, but God's.

Hold material goods and wealth on a flat palm and not in a clenched fist.

For all our time and attention, no matter how carefully we curate our stuff or how much we might enjoy ourselves along the way, we’re all merely stocking and staging someone else’s opportunity for bar...

American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, carton...

An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, whil...

When 67-year-old carpenter Russell Herman died in 1994, his will included a staggering set of bequests. Included in his plan for distribution was more than two billion dollars for the City of East St....

Money is a good servant but a bad master.

Psalm 101:3: “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.” The term here—worthless—is a compound, literally: without profit. It is “the quality of being useless, good for nothing.” Pg.11...

There is nothing more foolish than an act of wickedness; there is no wisdom equal to that of obeying God.