WHY do we have time, money, and food?

Why do we have time, money, and food? God had choices, didn't he, when he designed this thing we are going through? Couldn't we have done without these constant pains?

You might think this is a strange topic. But I don't. I've always been BUGGED by these things.

When we live in heaven someday, after we die, we won't have to eat. We won't need money. And time will cease to bind us. So they are temporary constraints on our condition. They are part of this terrarium, this microcosm, this contrivance that God has placed us in. I know his "ways are higher" than mine, but as often is the case, I don't get it.

Here are my complaints about time, money, and food.

First, time keeps me stressed out and prevents me from getting a decent amount of rest so that I can actually feel ready to do the stuff I need to do. It keeps me constantly in the "failure" zone because there is simply no way to get it all done. Then I get irritable and those around me "notice" and it's not pleasant for either of us. It also keeps me from helping a lot of people I could help if the world would just stop. It keeps me from learning a lot of things I'd like to learn because again, the world won't stop. But it wouldn't be so bad to have time if we didn't have to worry about the two other main pains of money and food.

I'd like to know what God had in mind with money. It's so unfair. It causes so much grief. So much want, and suffering, and tragedy when people don't have enough. So much crime when people won't come by it the right way. Conflict between well-meaning people, resentment, laws, new laws, more laws, aching backs, exhaustion, and tears. That's what money causes. OR... on the converse, proud looks and self-indignant expenditures, entitlement, self-justification, insulating the rich from the life the rest of us lead. But more to scale, in my life, it has been the cause of great suffering for my mother, abuses by my stepfather, and many desperate tears when I was a young wife needing to choose between this imperative need and another equally imperative need. If I didn't have to deal with money, and chasing it and planning and plotting in its regard, I could sure study a lot more, visit neighbor folks a lot more, and commune with God tons easier (especially with candles in my jetted tub). I'd spend more time playing street hockey with the neighborhood kids (I've never done that before, but maybe I would if there were no bills... who knows but I'm convinced my overall mood would be quite positive).

Then there's stupid, annoying food. It tastes great sometimes, but that's the only redeeming factor. The very fact that I'm a woman makes food extremely unpleasant. Everyone is looking at you when they're hungry, expecting that you'll have all the answers. You can't even get a snack if there's family around because they want "one of what you're having" but what if its the last one and you really want it? And, of course, you have to have money to get it in the first place. And nobody wants to take a day off from eating. Not to mention the fact that everyone in the house likes different things: no mustard/extra mustard, only fresh mushrooms/keep the mushrooms away from me, tomatoes for sure, only tomatoes if they are in a ketchup bottle, please no white flour/only white flour, and on and on. My kids weren't allowed to ask too many questions about the ingredients. But that didn't stop them anyway. And the fact that all of this needs to happen three times per day. And the fact that when an old person lives alone they have a hard time making it without catching the stove on fire. And the fact that everyone has an opinion about what they baby should or shouldn't eat regardless of if they are that babies parent, or who took the last cookie in the break room at work because we all think we know who it was and she's a glutton, or why they are only serving a continental breakfast instead of a hot breakfast at the hotel. And who is going to put the dishes away? And if it's more Eco friendly for everyone to be vegetarians. And if its ethical for chickens to be raised in cages. And why your neighbor has so many boxes of cereal in his cart at the check out because that's weird. And on and on and on. I probably wouldn't fight with anyone ever if food wasn't a thing. Not true, really, but still. It's ground for so much conflict and worry. Not to mention how much TIME AND MONEY it takes to deal with it.

Since I've mulled over the pointlessness and pain of time, money, and food for years, and often come up without an answer, I have finally come to some semi-plausible conclusions. Conclusions that fit into what I think God might intend since obviously, he had a reason for all of this. So here I go with my tentative explanation.

God sent us to earth to grow and learn.

We grow and learn when we are faced with challenges and have to make choices between two things, which would be easy if it were a choice between a pile of poop and a diamond, but our system is more complicated. Anyway...

Time, money, and food force us into making choices.

They force us to choose one over another, to let something else go in favor of something seemingly better.

The pressure from the squeeze we feel between these elements gives us a chance to be rude, rushed, uncaring, or charitable. They give us the chance to put ourselves last in one situation so that others can get their needs met. Or we could choose to be more assertive, more self-disclosing, or rushed, or irritable or apologetic or helpful or a million other things.

Bottom line, they force CHOICES. They provide the dilemmas that make us think.

I think the main reason I don't like them is I don't often like these choices that are forced. Its usually between two needed things. Or between someone getting deprived of a resource. And I don't like suffering. And I don't like going without needed things.

So I have to choose.

And the older I get, the more I realize that this is the main thing we are here on this earth to do. To make choices. I often dislike this fact. But I've noticed it does seem to build character. It does seem to force us to decide, deliberately, who we want to be. The crunch of time, the limits of money, and the constant demand for food puts us in situations day after day after day where we have to decide, in this moment, whether we are going to be focused on self-gratification or on service. Whether we're going to take a leap of faith or hold to certainty. Whether we're going to work or be lazy. Whether we're going to face up to scarcity with courage or shrink back with fear.

Those decisions are what mold us. The real us that we can take to heaven. The us that God is trying to push us to decide about. Then, in the next life, when these shackles fall away, we will be left with what we've become while in the heat of the workshop. The anvil and hammer will be put away, and we will gleam (or not gleam) in accordance with what we've become.