Instead of spending our lives backing into eternity and clinging to our earthly treasures, we can turn around, walk forward and lay up our treasures in our eternal home. Then, instead of moving away from our treasures, we’ll spend our lives moving toward them.

A reader wrote our ministry, “For several years my husband and I have enjoyed giving most of our discretionary income to our church and various missionaries. But lately we have been counseled that we need to be more ‘responsible’ about preparing for our future, especially since retirement is only a few years away. How do we deal with the guilt we would feel about decreasing our giving, since we still desire to meet the needs we see all around us?”

There are two sides to the issue of savings. Scripture tells us that the wise man anticipates future needs, while the foolish man spends and consumes all his resources with no thought for the future. “In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has” (Proverbs 21:20). Even ants store up provisions for the coming winter (Proverbs 6:6-8).

It’s a shortsighted person who fails to store up provisions (money, food, or materials) for upcoming times of predictable need. If you are planning to retire and have no other means of income, then it would be wise to make some plans for how and where you will live after retirement.

On the other hand, Jesus commended the poor widow of Mark 12:41-44 because she did something most of us would consider foolish. She gave her last two pennies to God, having no idea where tomorrow’s provision would come from, except that it would come from her Lord. In 2 Corinthians 8:3-15, the Macedonian Christians gave “beyond their means” to the point of leaving themselves impoverished. Paul commends them for it.

So when it comes to the “retirement dream,” we must ask ourselves, Whose dream is it? Is it God’s dream or the American dream? Consider one man’s plans for retirement: “I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink and be merry’” (Luke 12:18-19).

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