The Love of Money

Pictured above is a special pneumatic drill that was used in gold mines.  The guide as we visited a mine this past summer in CO told us they called this the “widow-maker”.  The drill was very efficient for grinding the rock and the gold so it could be separated from the mountain.  What they did not realize at first is that the dust given off would leave cuts in the lungs of the people who worked with them.  Within six months of beginning to work with the drill a person would die, basically drowning in their own blood.

What was amazing is that people were standing in line to get to work with this drill because they would be paid $15 a day which was way beyond the $.25 per hour that a normal laborer might have made elsewhere.  But look at the sacrifice, the love of money drove them to give their life.  How many wives and children were left without fathers and husbands because they thought they could get rich.

Today OSHA and other help protect people from these types of jobs to the best of their ability, yet people have such a desire for money that they will often end up in jobs that will cost them their families and their marriages.  We must work to avoid the traps of materialism that are so prevalent in our society today!

Paul told the Colossians in chapter 3:5 that they were to put to death their earthly members that included covetousness, which is idolatry!