How Much Land Does One Man Need?

A reflection on Genesis 13 
by Josh McPaul

So... money. Money and family. When the two get mixed, it gets complicated real quick. The pressures of affection and greed push heavily on one another. God knows these pressures and the Bible speaks of them.

Over the next few weeks, while we preach through Jacob's story, we will be reading through Genesis and the tumultuous family story of God's first family. I love this story because it doesn't exist on a spiritual plane, but on the gritty, greedy, sweaty, swearing, tender and trying plane of human existence.

And in today's story we find Abraham and his nephew, trying to negotiate money and family. Abraham and his nephew Lot have grown wealthy over time. But now their wealth (in cattle) was starting to compete, and what had once been a mutually beneficial cooperation had now become competition. Wealth, a blessing from God, had become a new challenge, threatening to tear them up.

Back in the 1800s, when John Wesley started his 'Methodism' movement, there was a surprising development. Wesley preached discipline and frugality and pretty soon, those who followed him, not only became spiritually rich but financially wealthy. This posed a problem. The spiritual life of Methodists was defined by frugality - wealth seemed to provide a more difficult spiritual challenge.

Whether you are wealthy or not, there is a spiritual challenge and spiritual wisdom needed. We need God's wisdom at every point. Whatever questions you have about your money, in wealth and poverty, bring them to God.

Abraham makes a good choice. Instead of leveraging his position in order to get more money, he uses his position to give up power. The blessings of wealth do not automatically mean that he must get more. He freely makes the financially unwise choice and so becomes the master of his own wealth. Lot on the other hand chooses the financially wise choice, but it leads him down a path of accumulation which will destroy his family eventually.

Leo Tolstoy wrote a famous story called 'How Much Land Does One Man Need?' Pahom the peasant thinks that if only he had more land he could laugh in the face of the Devil. Money promises power. One day, he gets a strange offer. He can buy land for a small fixed price, and he can buy as much as he is able to walk around in a single day. But if he can't make a whole loop, he will lose his money. So he walks as far as he can, but as the sun sets he realizes he is too far out, and won't be able to make it back. He runs in a panic back to the start, and finally makes it just before the sun sets. He has made the loop, but in exhaustion he collapses, dead. He is buried in a 6ft. plot of earth - the amount of land every man needs eventually.

Wealth is a gift. But it complicates things, and it never solves things. Let us all pray for wisdom.