The Monopoly Money

I was reading Good to be Crazy and something hit me right in the face. She quoted Amy Carmichael who said: “Satan is so much more in earnest than we are–he buys up the opportunity while we are wondering how much it will cost.”

I immediately thought of Monopoly. When I play monopoly I win. The minute the game starts I buy every single piece of property I have until I am just about out of cash. This strategy always gives me a leg up on gaining monopolies of everything and having more properties to trade to complete my monopolies. While my husband is usually more conservative with what he buys targeting specific areas and making sure he has enough to pay for things that come up. While I am flagrantly throwing my cash down to gain every advantage that I can, knowing that the future can worry about the future and I can always mortgage/sell a property off if I run into trouble. To me - gaining ground is the most important strategy and I don't even look at the cost of purchases until I am told I can't afford one.

Fortunately I am not quite this irresponsible with money in real life. And since Bry handles the books the net result is nothing like how I play Monopoly. But maybe it should be. Maybe we should be putting every single penny we have into advancing the cause of Christ. Desire of comfort and the American way is not how we want to be, so why is that not reflected in our budget as much as it should be? The enemy is certainly not worrying about saving for a rainy day - he is putting every penny down because he knows his time is limited. Well our time is also limited in the earthly sense, shouldn't we be putting every penny down too?

Well, Bryan won't play much Monopoly with me anymore. Maybe its the real estate agents in my blood, or my buy em all up strategy, but my continuous winning makes the game less fun for him - not sure why... So basically I go all out, always win, and he gives up. Hmmm - sounds like a good strategy for life too?

The Tip

Memorial Box Monday Edition

So for a period of time I was working for a cable provider as a field technician and really struggling to pay my way. It seemed as if every single week I would run out of money a couple days before pay day and really have to get creative. I would find ways to make groceries stretch, I would find ways to make the bills get paid a month early so that when I was late I was never really late, but could go a couple extra days since I was in actuality a month ahead. I would do things like this because I was in a situation where that was my only choice. Perhaps my eyes were bigger than my wallet as far as choosing housing and all, but for whatever the reason I was low on dough in those days.

So, God used these times to show me in mighty ways how tangible and real He was. I remember many times where I did not have money for gas to get home from work and God would just bring it out of thin air. I would be in my truck driving around and praying. "Please God - help me make my gas last for just one more day". Then I would moments later walk into a client who would hand me just enough money to put gas in my car as a tip. Now, tips were not the norm in my job. Sometimes you would go months without a tip. And I have to say I have never thought to tip the cable man when he came to my house. But every now again, without rhyme or reason, a client would shove money in my hand/pocket/toolbag and insist that I take it. The part that made it so very beautiful to me was when I hadn't had a tip in months, and not necessarily asking for it, just praying God would find a way to provide, and out of nowhere a tip of $10 or $20 to go into my gas tank and get me home and back to work the next day.

God made sure He did this in very obvious ways to me. And often now people think I am insensitive and careless about money. And perhaps sometimes I am (thank the Lord I have a husband who is the exact opposite with money), but it is just something the Lord has taught me not to worry about. The God of the universe has the ability to provide more money than I need, and He has proven to me that he will always take care of me much more than I deserve. So on this memorial box monday I want to make sure that I remember all those times God took care of the little things for me.

²⁵"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? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life^[b]? - Matthew 6

This week I am putting a bean in my memorial box. Because God was my provider of gas!