Covenant
- Oct 12, 2022
- 3 min read

Dear God, Where Should I Invest?

October 12, 2022

By Jo Wiersema

Midweek Musings is a weekly Covenant blog with a variety of authors and a variety of topics.

There’s a big joke about the things we should or maybe shouldn’t pray for. If you grew up not too far from the 2003 film Bruce Almighty, you might remember the scene where Bruce, the person stepping in for God, is overwhelmed with prayer requests. Bruce takes a couple different approaches to collecting the prayers, once having all the prayers as sticky notes.

Admittedly it’s been well over a decade since I last saw the movie, but I remember the drama of the number of prayers coming into Bruce and how so many of them were about money. Not about money to meet basic needs, but about luxury. There are prayers for lottery ticket wins and the like. The prayers for the luxury of our neighbors, the better car, the better house, the new TV.

The movie Bruce Almighty is admittedly problematic at best and shouldn’t be used as a representative for Christian culture or the character of God, but I’m not sure it’s too far off from the money-mindedness of Christian prayer. It’s not to saying praying over money and next steps surrounding money is wrong, but we must ask about the root of these requests.

Over the last few months in this blog, you all are probably aware of my big thoughts on prayer (Praying Wrong, The Prayers of Children, and Hagar’s Prayer) as it’s the place we can always go to for anything, with a God who is big enough to make the world, yet is approachable enough to listen about my woes around my Hebrew Midterm.

But when it comes to money, the things we don’t love to talk about, can we still go to God?

Does God care about the worth of the US dollar?

Or what stocks are doing well?

Or Cryptocurrency?

Our God of all creation, can they know and care about the minutiae of the everyday?

Do the prayers I pray to go get lost in the filing cabinet of prayers?

I don’t believe so. Our God lives outside of time and space but is also so intimately close with us. So, I ask and pray to a God that listens:

Where should I invest?

Beyond money what can I invest my time and energy into?

How can I invest in the things that are already in my care? My job, my garden, my gifts.

As we dive into this series on Money Matters, Life Matters, we can take a few minutes to ask for that prayer of guidance. Maybe we don’t ask for the winning lottery ticket numbers, but we can pray that my heart, mind, and soul are handed over to God and are guided with Their will in mind.

I’m still going to screw up.

I’m still going to pray for good grades and an easy commute and for my coffee to still be warm even when I forget it.

But that’s okay, we have

...a God of love

...a God of listening

...a God with us

...a God who doesn’t just give the widespread “YES” that Bruce does in Bruce Almighty.

Not all prayers are answered exactly how we like, but we never know what the answer will be unless we start with a prayer.