August 24: When is 13% the same as 40% the same as 0%?

Job 12:1-15:35
1 Corinthians 15:29-58
Psalm 39:1-13
Proverbs 21:30-31

Proverbs 21:30-31
There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan
that can succeed against the Lord.
The horse is made ready for the day of battle,
but victory rests with the Lord.

I would imagine that a majority of people invested in the stock market are prudent investors. They save part of their income monthly, and invest it in hopes of building a nest egg with which to retire, with which to enjoy things later on in life. They had a plan, they prepared, they were diligent.

Just today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.6%. Since it hit its 5 year highs, it is down 13.3% - not an insignificant sum. Assuming one made the same amount each year, and assuming one had, as is the case for me, worked 26 years to build a nest egg, the 13.3% drop would have set one back roughly around three and a half years. And yet that isn't the worst of it. In China, where presumably people are just as good at planning and saving, the Shanghai Composite Index is down 40%. Today's proverb seems particularly apropos.

The plight of those who lost money in the markets is nothing compared to all Job lost - not just wealth, but family as well, as we hear him cry out to God and speak to his friends about his plight. I don't know how I would respond faced with the overwhelming circumstances of Job's life, but I think it safe to say I do not yet have such strength of relationship with God that would let me proclaim "Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him...indeed this will turn out for my deliverance..."

Indeed, how are we to respond? For further example, consider today's psalm...

But now, Lord, what do I look for?
My hope is in you.
Save me from all my transgressions
[including, presumably, the times I put faith in myself and my own plans]
do not make me the scorn of fools.

We serve an awesome God Who, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, "gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." And so, as Paul advises, we can stand firm, letting nothing move us - not the worry about money, not the worry about tomorrow, because consistent with the proverb above, as we "give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord...[we] know that [our] labor in the Lord is not in vain." Which is why when we lose 13%, or 40% of our savings, it is though we lost nothing.

Sent from my iPad