Money in the Bank

We had fake money when I was a kid to help us learn math and budgeting. It got me thinking; journey with me into my imagination.  (Buckle up!)

Imagine a little girl with a Monopoly game. She hears about someone needing help, so she gathers all the money up, the pinks, blues, greens, yellows, and brings the stack to her mother as a donation. The mother, warmed by her daughter’s generosity, decides to give her daughter a real $1.00 or $5.00 bill in return.

The girl looks at the bill and gives her mother a questioning look as if to ask, “How does this compare to what I gave you?” Compared to the stack of monopoly money a real bill looks blah (official description).

As adults, we realize that the mother has blessed her child by exchanging what is artificial with what is real. It might not be as pretty as the monopoly money, but it’s far more powerful.

Treasure in Heaven

Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. — Luke 6:38

It’s so easy to read these verses and give with the expectation that God will reward us in this life with our kind of “currency.”  We think that this life is the real deal, but this is a shadow of what’s to come. We think if we give our money to the Lord’s work, it will come back in houses, cars, money, promotion, health, wealth, and other luxuries. I believe that that is the equivalent of giving God monopoly money and then wondering why He doesn’t give it back to us. Instead, when He gives us actual spiritual blessings, we don’t realize that we’ve been given the real thing — a treasure laid up in heaven where neither moth nor rust shall destroy nor thieves break in and steal.

The currency of the Kingdom of God, at least at this time, is a currency of humility,  persecution, and shame for the sake of the cross and name of Jesus Christ. It is not a cheerfully colored currency.

But the dividends are fantastic.

And that’s a budget principal we can all appreciate.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.