Money is a double-edged sword. It provides pretty much anything you can ask for. You use it for grocery shopping, gas and school supplies.You save it for a car, tuition and travel. It’s what you work hard for, putting in 40 hours a week to check your bank balance and shrug. Everything you do costs money, directly or indirectly. Love can’t buy happiness, after all.

Money is the paper and metal shifting around in your purse or backpack, or hiding underneath your couch. It sits in digital code on a plastic card, labeled with a 16-digit code, beckoning you to make one impulse buy after another. It gives you stomachaches just to think about the cost of medical insurance, but money somehow pays for your prescriptions. You label a jar “gas money” and set it by your bed to collect loose change during finals week, yet you had to have gotten the jar and label from somewhere.Money sews together every business deal, pursues every job application, fuels every sports game and music performance, and is shoved under glass at the city hall after a car wreck.

It also gets you college education.

But where, you ask, is this precious money? Where is the green, silver and copper manna that feeds, clothes and shelters you? Where is the precious yet palpable resource of necessity that led Alexander Hamilton to start up the first national bank? Where is the money that is supposed to pay for the cost of classes, books and board? And why is it all so expensive?

Ecclesiastes 7:12 tells us that “wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves those who have it.” You are in college for a purpose: to learn about your craft and become the best you can be at using that craft to change the world. You can believe that money is buying you education, which it technically does, but I say you are investing in it. Proverbs 28:20 says, “A faithful man will abound with blessings, but he who makes haste to be rich will not go unpunished.” Therefore, be faithful and discerning in your educational pursuits, as well in daily spending.

The next time you are driven to tears by viewing your award letter and setting up a payment plan, remember that “this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). He will take care of you; He’s led you this far in pursuing your degree. Don’t let the infinity of dollar signs stop you from realizing God’s provision for your life.