Word of Wisdom: Wealth

“Your wealth is where your friends are.” Plautus

In June of 1999, I moved to New York City at the age of twenty-two with two bags of clothes, a few books, and a cashier’s check for about a thousand dollars that I’d saved up over the previous months.

With the aid of others I procured a small room in someone else’s small apartment in Harlem, and thereupon set about the next two tasks: opening a bank account and finding a job.

Both took longer than I hoped.

After almost three weeks, I was still unemployed, but more urgently, still had no bank account in which to deposit my small savings. Without the proper documents demonstrating residency to open a simple checking account, I was penniless.

However, I was building relationships across the city, and around that time I met a young couple who both had successful careers going. At a Bible study in their swanky apartment overlooking the East River, I mentioned in passing my banking plight. My new friend said rather casually, “Go see my guy at Smith Barney in Midtown and he’ll fix you up.”

Surprised, I clarified to him that we were talking about funds in the range of $1k, not $100k. An important detail, I thought; after all, he was sending me to an investment advisory firm, not a local credit union. And if I knew one thing about the name Smith Barney, it was that they made money the old-fashioned way…they earned it. Seeing as I had yet earned hardly anything, I didn’t like the chances of this plan working out.

But my friend assured me, “Just tell him I sent you, and he’ll take care of you.” So, later that week I marched down to West 48th Street in Manhattan, met with my friend’s financial advisor on the 35th floor, rather timidly handed over my check, and watched with significant amazement as he took it, set me up with an account number, and shook my hand as we ended the meeting.

I walked out feeling like a million bucks, even though my total net worth remained unchanged at roughly .1% of that.

Why was that? Why did I feel “wealthier” in that moment? As I’ve reflected on that question, the answer I keep coming back to is summed up in one word: access. In a short span of time, I gained access to a few things: specifically, my money that had been locked up on a slip of paper, as well as the services of a major financial firm going forward.

But more broadly, I realized I had access—to solutions, to answers, to provision—through the relationships I now had. I began to have a sense that the social capital I already possessed, let alone that which would accrue in the coming years, had value that, though difficult to quantify, might possibly exceed other assets that could more easily be modeled, measured…and manipulated.

I was reminded of that experience recently, while surrounded by twenty other men around a fire at a Canyon Pathways retreat. As I sat there and took in the environment—one filled with peace, camaraderie, restfulness, receiving—the joy and contentment I felt overflowed, and one word kept coming to mind to describe what I was feeling: wealthy.

It surprised me, because I hadn’t previously used the term to describe what felt like…feelings. Yet the more I considered it, I realized what I was experiencing wasn’t simply some ephemeral emotional response, but rather a state of being formed by very tangible realities.

In that moment, I was subconsciously recognizing that I was well-cared for in the present, and would be in the future, come what may, because I had access—through these relationships—to whatever I might need. These men around me, from diverse places with diverse abilities and experiences, together formed a community that could protect me and assist me with any problem that might arise. Legal problem? Check. Financial problem? Check. Real estate matter, plumbing issue, medical question, car problem, relationship challenge? Check, check, check, check, and check.

And, more than simply being protected, this relational access provided opportunity for growth and increase. Should I need someone smarter or wiser than me, that was there in this “account”. Someone better at communicating with others, or more accomplished at the grill, or more creative in their design thinking or precise in their business acumen? All I had to do was ask and receive. I had access. I possessed wealth.

As it turns out, to describe such a “relationally rich” environment as wealth is not a clever cop out or a flippant fable about finances. It actually reorients our approach to the concept more closely to its essence.

Though a typical dictionary definition might read “an abundance of valuable possessions”, the word wealth comes to us from the Middle English wele, meaning “well-being”. Later it was combined with the Proto-Germanic -th, akin to our word health. It is the state of being “well”: well cared for, well protected, well provisioned.

Of course, this well-being, this wealth, is precarious in our mortal age, and constantly buffeted by circumstances, by accusations, by adversaries—physical, spiritual, and imagined. And in a world where faithful friendship is elusive and isolation and anxiety are ubiquitous, we default to an individualized, exclusively monetized working definition of wealth that can keep us striving, grasping, yearning for “more”, because no amount of fiat funds is “enough” to fend off the fears, to produce the affirmation, to eliminate the loneliness.

These “in-securities” are ubiquitous in the life of a servant, a hired hand, a slave; droughts, diseases, downturns, deficiencies, dictatorial decisions can all strike at any moment, no matter what has been accomplished or accumulated.

But a son…a son is an heir. A son is in relationship—not a contractual one, a continual one. A son is not grasping for gain, but receiving residual benefits. A son is not sitting envying neighbors in the zip code, but expectantly waiting to inherit while passing through on the journey.

And as sons, we’re called—privileged, really—to steward that wealth that’s been placed in trust for us by managing the relationships—the lives and gifts and divine image existing within those relationships—that make up the assets in that trust account. Every phone call to check in, every act of assistance or encouragement, every confidence kept, obstacle overcome, or relationship reconciled on behalf of a brother in need, this is the stewardship of sonship.

It is the stewardship that our forebear Cain forfeited, but that the Son of God redeemed and returned to us.

Now, we can exist as a son of God, from moment to moment, an inheritor of wealth. Moreover, we can seek out and gather with other sons of God…and access the experience of that wealth. Today.

And unlike that old Smith Barney account, no fees will be deducted from the balance.

“He did all this so you would never say to yourself, ‘I have achieved this wealth with my own strength and energy.’” Deuteronomy 8:17 (NLT)