June 24

You Cannot Serve Both God And Money

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

Matthew 6:24-25 

One day in 1861, Sarah Dunn, a young school teacher who lived in Waterloo, Iowa, was sitting in her home finishing an elaborate piece of handwork for her home, when she sensed a voice speaking to her, asking, “What are you doing to decorate your heavenly home?”

This question haunted her in the weeks and months that followed. She had professed faith in Christ several years earlier, but she had not been faithful in reaching out to others with the gospel. Now the salvation of lost souls became her life’s goal.

When she moved to Chicago some years later, she saw all around masses of needy people, and she dedicated herself to meeting their physical and spiritual needs. She recruited friends to help in her outreach efforts, and in 1869 organized a mission Sunday school. She was convinced that she had found God’s will in his service.

But, four years later, at the age of thirty eight, her life changed dramatically. She married Colonel George H. Clarke, a wealthy Chicago realtor. She struggled through “four merry years in the fashionable circle to which Colonel Clarke clung despite his Christianity.” Her “conscience was troubling her” because of what she perceived to be “a misuse of God’s time in social functions”

Sarah was convinced that God wanted them to reach out to the poor and establish a mission, but her husband was bent on pursuing his business career and amassing wealth. In his quest for this dream, he traveled to the Rocky Mountains on a lucrative business venture that Sarah feared would ruin any possibility of their mission work together.

While he was gone, she “agonized many hours in prayer.” It was no surprise then that while the colonel laid his plans for riches, the Spirit of God spoke to him with sharp conviction. Alone with God a thousand miles from home, he fell to his knees and consecrated himself to divine service for mission work. He telegraphed his wife of his change of life purposes and added that, “he was returning to Chicago at once to join her in founding a mission.”

In 1877 they founded a mission on South Clark street in Chicago—“the first rescue mission in the Northwest”—the forerunner of the Pacific Garden Mission. Although Colonel Clarke was known as “the poorest preacher that ever tried to expound God’s Word,” he was sustained by his devoted wile. She had a remarkable personal manner with needy people, and together they became instruments in the transformation of countless lives. ²⁴