Yes, April 15th is fast approaching. If you're getting a refund then you've probably already finished your taxes. If you owe, then you're probably postponing the inevitable till the last day. As they say, there are two guaranteed things in life.....death and taxes. It does seem like the chunk the IRS takes out is too large of a portion, huh? Especially when Congress is so wasteful in their spending of it.
All of what we have is God's, before it is ours. Leviticus 27;30 ''A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord.'' We have temporary custody but it can all be taken from us at anytime. We are to give freely and with the right spirit with what we are blessed with to further the Kingdom. ''Jesus said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Our support of things includes both our verbal affirmation and our financial response. We are blessed when we bless others by paying our blessings forward.
I liked your picture. I saw in the paper recently where Kerry promised Ukraine $1 billion dollars; a few days later I saw a headline about students burdened down with educational debt. Why can they give away $1 billion without even voting on it? They certainly act like the tax money we pay is THEIRS! If the country is broke like they say, how can we given away a billion dollars and if we have that kind of money to give away wouldn't it be better helping our young people be educated or a myriad of other things.
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I don't ever feel like I'm storing up treasure with the U.S. government. Far from it. But I try to work at storing up treasure in Heaven. There are dividends... and there are DIVIDENDS.... It's easy to focus too much on the first and not enough on the second in my humble (!) opinion... :)
ReplyDeleteAccording to the national averages in my turbo tax software we give pay $18,300 in federal taxes and give $4,022 in charitable contributions. How can we store treasures in heaven if we give 4.5 times as much to the government as we do to God's work. Who do we serve the most? Dad
ReplyDeleteYep! It's tax season, and it does seem to dredge up the ire of those who earn incomes. Thankfully, Jesus did give us instruction, or there might be a foment of rebellion from the over-burdened tax payers (as seen in the above comments!)
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