3.28.16
Recently, I had lunch with Caney, our 5-year old grandson at Veggie Grill. On our way out, Daniel pointed a penny on the floor and immediately, Caney picked it up and felt incredibly rich. His mission for the rest of the day was to look for more money.
The two of us went over to REI for me to look for some shoes so that I might use this year’s dividend dollars. Once we got into the store, I lost Caney. I looked between the rolls of clothes and called out his name. I began to panic. Then I saw him at the other entrance of the store and scolded him to stay close to me. His response was “Why didn’t you follow me?” Somewhere I read that it will be a child who will lead them.
When I was growing up in Boston, my father would always have loose change in a cigar box in the top drawer of his dresser. Whenever we needed milk money in those days—3 cents a day, only 15 cents a week—we would go to get some money. Somehow, I don’t remember ever taking more than what I needed. And there was always enough loose change for us to get by.
I wonder what the symbol of money has to do with our lives today. Increasingly, we are using less cash and hardly anyone uses change now. They rather take their loose change to the supermarket machine to receive a store credit or paper money. We now have debit and credit cards, e-commerce, and bit coins that eliminate us from ever having the need to handle actual money now. I still have a plastic bag of change in my glove compartment so that whenever I am heading into a store, I would grab a handful of change to use up my pennies, nickels and dimes.
Yesterday after our family Easter dinner, Sage and I played her favorite game of Life. This is the same board game that Lauren grew up with. She of course won with more children in her little plastic car, more money at the end in the millions. But what I remembered the most this time is that Sage is good with money. She gave out my payday as a journalist of $24,000 each time, made change accurately and was able to count up all her money to win the game by using the calculator on my BlackBerry. For a budding almost 10-year old, having money is becoming very important to her.
I think about Jesus seeing how a widow who gave her last coin to God proportionately gave much, much more than those who gave out of their wealth. She gave her all while most people gave what was disposable anyway. I pray that our grandchildren will give all they are to God and to others.