Rich and poor, pure in heart

If you woke up tomorrow morning with an extremely large sum of money in your bank account, what would you do??

Now, after coming back from Disneyland 😉 I think it actually is a really interesting question to ponder.

I’ve heard many people say something along the lines of:

“Having lots of money just makes you more of who you already are.”

And I think I agree with this.

If you are just barely scraping by financially right now, but you still pay your tithing and help a neighbor out when they need a meal, then you would likely be a wealthy person who still pays their tithing and is able to help out people in much more dramatic ways.

And if you are living well right now, but stingy with giving away any money, then it’s probably likely that you would find reasons to be stingy with your money when you had a lot of it, too.

The Lord says something along the same lines in D&C 56:16-17:

“Wo unto you rich men, that will not give your substance to the poor, for your riches will canker your souls….

“Wo unto you poor men, whose hearts are not broken, whose spirits are not contrite”.

So, if both the rich and the poor are getting warnings from the Lord here, what can we do to make sure we are doing as we should?

The Lord answers that in verse 18:

The “pure in heart, whose hearts are broken, and whose spirits are contrite”.

In other words, we need to have a soft heart!

If our hearts are broken and humbled before the Lord, then it doesn’t matter what our bank account looks like.

Rich and poor people can be prideful with hardened hearts.

And rich and poor people can be humbled, with soft hearts.

The status of our bank account doesn’t matter nearly as much as the status of our heart.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black