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What if your bank balance, your career, and even your health were all just expiring airline miles?
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Even as money fades, love remains the only currency that never expires.Introduction: Expiring Miles and Eternal Investments
Life is short, and what we value often slips away faster than we expect.
Ever gotten that email warning you your airline miles are about to expire? Suddenly you’re scrambling to book a trip anywhere—just so your points don’t vanish into thin air. That same urgency is woven into one of Jesus’ strangest parables (Luke 16:1–13, ESV). A manager facing unemployment makes questionable moves to secure his future. Oddly, Jesus doesn’t praise his dishonesty—but His shrewdness.
The lesson is simple but profound: what you can’t keep, you should learn to spend on what will last.
This piece explores three lessons for daily life: measuring success by love, shaping society through prayer, and stewarding temporary resources with eternal goals in mind.
Love Is the Only Currency That Lasts
“Hear this, you who trample on the needy…” (Amos 8:4, ESV). The prophet Amos condemned merchants who treated people as profit margins. Their rituals looked fine, but their love account was empty.
The Psalms flip the script: “For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar” (Psalm 138:6, ESV). God doesn’t measure worth by titles or assets—He looks at how we treat the vulnerable.
The Collect for this Sunday sums it up: “Without love, all our deeds are worth nothing.”
Why this matters today:
- A busy calendar or packed budget often reveals what we truly love.
- Our priorities speak louder than our words.
Action step: Audit your time and spending this week. Ask: Would someone see love—generosity, compassion, care—written into these choices?
📚 Helpful Resource: Generous Justice by Timothy Keller explores how faith shapes justice and compassion.
Pray God’s Priorities into Public Life
Personal prayer stretches into public life, shaping leaders, communities, and the world around us.Paul told Timothy: “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions” (1 Timothy 2:1–2, ESV).
Why? Because God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (v. 4, ESV).
Prayer reorders our loves. Before we fear the future or rage at the news, we pray. Before we post online, we bless. Prayer doesn’t just change leaders—it changes us.
Why this matters today:
- Praying for those we dislike stretches our compassion.
- Intercession reshapes cynicism into hope.
Action step: Choose three people to pray for daily this week—one local leader, one national figure, and one person you find difficult.
📚 Helpful Resource: A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller is practical, honest, and deeply encouraging for anyone who struggles with prayer.
Be Faithful and Shrewd with What Fades
Back to the parable: the manager uses his limited time and resources to secure relationships for the future (Luke 16:9, ESV). Jesus’ challenge is blunt: “If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” (Luke 16:11, ESV).
Money, health, influence—all of it fades. But love lasts. The real issue isn’t whether you have money, but whether money has you.
Missionary Jim Elliot, who gave his life bringing the gospel to the Huaorani people of Ecuador, once wrote: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” His life and death embodied the truth that temporary things are best spent on eternal purposes.
Why this matters today:
- Small acts of faithfulness—paying debts, tipping fairly, keeping promises—build integrity.
- Shrewdness means channeling temporary resources into eternal outcomes: friendships, acts of kindness, justice, hospitality.
Action step: Pick one tangible way to use your money, home, or skills for someone else’s good this week. Invite a neighbor to dinner, support a local cause, or give without expecting return.
📚 Helpful Resource: The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn offers a short but powerful perspective on money and eternity.
Conclusion: Spend What Expires on What Endures
Time and money fade—but love remains the treasure worth investing in.Airline miles expire. So do careers, possessions, and even our breath. What doesn’t expire is love.
The week’s simple rule of life:
- Pray first. Each day, pray for leaders and enemies.
- Choose one shrewd act of love. Spend what you can’t keep on what you can’t lose.
- Audit a habit. Notice where convenience might be trampling compassion—and change it.
Jesus said plainly: “You cannot serve God and money” (Luke 16:13, ESV). The choice isn’t complicated—but it is urgent. Choose your Master. Spend what fades on what lasts.
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💡 Want to stop wasting what fades and start investing in what lasts?
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