I'm not here to be a millionaire.....I just need gas....

Last night my daughter and I were out and I realized that I needed to stop and get some gas. I had the misfortune of getting behind some folks that were buying lottery tickets by the double armload. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, I told the cashier "I'm not here to become a millionaire, I just need gas". They all laughed and he took my money and set up the pump.

As money tightens and times get tough, it seems the 'get rich quick' schemes become more and more aggressive. I'm reminded of an old joke about a guy that saw an ad in the paper that said "Send in a dollar to find out how to make $500 in a week without doing anything" he sent the dollar in to find out the secret a week later, the secret came. It said "Put an ad in the paper asking people to send in a dollar....".

I've mentioned before that my parents are older than most people my age. My father was born in 1925 and my mom born in 1927. This put the depression in their early childhood. I was talking to my mom's brother at Christmas and he was telling my some about that time. He was laughing at the news that said unemployment had hit a high of 7%. He said "I can remember a time when unemployment was 20%"

He told me a story about an ice cream company put an ad in the paper that they 13 jobs for people to push ice cream carts around Nashville. They had a 'job fair' of sorts at the fairgrounds and he said that several thousand people showed up to try to get one of those jobs.

On my drive back from St. Louis the other day I found an NPR station and listened to it until it eventually broke up. They had a story about an ad campaign in some foreign country (I forget which one, Denmark maybe?) where they were encouraging people to spend spend spend during this global economic downturn. The logic being that when you spend, you feed the economy. They compared it to a campaign here in the states that was encouraging people to save save save. The were tied together because they both used a piggy bank as the visual for the ad. The foreign ad portrayed the piggy bank as 'evil' while the domestic ad portrayed it as good. They had some economists comment on the ads and the philosophy of both. The economist's opinion (which I agree with) is that the saving pig is the way to go.

I must say that there is one area that anyone should consider at a time like this. Usually, the first thing to go in a tight economy is giving. Church collections drop, non-profit organizations suffer. I believe that this runs counter to the way it should be. My feelings on this are based on a verse in the Bible that I can't get out of my head when it comes to finances....

Malachi 3:8-12

8 "Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.
"But you ask, 'How do we rob you?'
"In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit," says the LORD Almighty. 12 "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty.

Someone pointed out to me years ago that this is the only place in the Bible where God says "Test Me"

Maybe we should try it...