In It for the Riches

I've heard a lot of complaining lately. Complaints about the COVID pandemic and the way it is being handled, complaints about the condition of our state and our city. And I’ve seen more and more people take their complaints on the road, literally. They’re packing up and moving away. Some of them had little or no choice following the Camp Fire, but many others are not being forced out. They are bailing.

I’m not blind to the problems we suffer. I’m fully aware of the crime and disintegration of our local way of life. But here I sit, working from home in a house we bought here in Chico less than two years ago. Two years ago Paul and I had finally saved up enough for a down payment on a house. We began researching places to live and decided to move twenty-five miles down the road to Oroville, where we could get a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood for the same amount of money.

That October we started shopping and put an offer on a lovely three-bedroom house. We were outbid, but undeterred. The next Sunday morning, our then pastor, Matt Raley, preached a sermon that hit my husband, Paul, and I right between the eyes. We both clearly recognized God wanted us to focus our energies in the place where He has planted us and to put His kingdom, His people, and His work here in Chico ahead of our dreams of a nicer house in a better neighborhood. We finished our lunch and called our realtor to cancel that afternoon’s appointments in Oroville.

We knew the market. We knew that our money would get us very little here, but, determined to trust and obey, we started looking at shacks here in Chico. We put an offer on the nicest one we found. We went into escrow that October and gave notice to our landlord. Then things started to go wrong, not the least of which was the Camp Fire. At that point, with thousands of people displaced, demand and prices climbed so sharply that if our escrow fell through we would have been forced to leave Butte County altogether. But we had the unique peace that comes from knowing that we were in the predicament we were in precisely because we had determined to obey God. We sat back and watched the mountains move.

Now, nearly two years later, I’m sitting in the cute little shack that God reserved for us, in the little city that seems to be disintegrating around us, watching people leave to pursue the dreams we abandoned— more house for less money, cleaner neighborhood, less crime, lower taxes. I still wish I had all of those things. But what I want more are the true riches, the ones I learned about nine years ago when Pastor Matt taught through Ephesians, “the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (1:18b).

My brothers and sisters at the local church where God has called me to serve and to work are Christ’s riches. These are the people He has poured His lifeblood into. Yes, there are Christians in other places, but these are the ones He has specifically led me to serve, and moved mountains to keep me serving. This troubled little city is the dark place in He’s called me to shine in, and it’s going to take a lot more than dreams of worldly prosperity to get me to leave.

This post is an edited version of an article originally written to my local church family.