More Than Fine

When I asked the Lord what to write about for today, He reminded me of something that happened a little over a year and a half ago. I had to think about the timing of it because so much has happened in that short period of time that it seems a much longer time has passed, but when I think about it, it was really only that relatively short amount of time. It was a small thing that happened in the scheme of my own life, a little blip on the radar screen if I look at it from purely human eyes. But it was a bigger thing than that if you think about it with the eyes of the spiritual world, and if you think about the ways that things spin off of other things, it really was not a small thing at all.

What happened is that one Sunday after church I was walking back to the train that I take home. The church that I was attending regularly at the time was not very close to where the train is, but I like to walk and I walk when I can to save money on transportation because I need to and because it makes sense to. Subway and bus fares keep going up, and every little bit can really add up to a huge amount. So I walk and it’s a part of my regular exercise and it helps my physical and mental and financial health all at once. When I was close to the train station, I stopped at a bank to withdraw $20 because I didn’t have much cash on me at all and I don’t like to be down to nothing. When I walked in the door there was someone finishing up their transaction who left, and then when I was finished I stopped at the little desk or kiosk or whatever you want to call it to put my money safely away in my wallet before walking outside. Lying on the desk or kiosk or whatever that thing is was a wallet that was much larger than mine, not only because it was larger in size, but because it was bulging with money and credit cards and a bank card and a metro card. But there was no id card with an address of any kind. The name was on the bank card, and the bank was my bank, so I called up the customer service number and told them what I’d found.

The person on the other end of the line said there was nothing that he could do except to cancel the card, and I kept asking if there was any way he could contact the person and tell him I had his wallet. He suggested that I go to the police station, but I didn’t know where the closest one was. I was on the phone with this guy for quite a little while, and then finally, just as he was saying that he could put a note on the account but that he’d have to cancel the bank card too just to be safe, a frantic man came rushing up to the bank door and saw me and started waving that it was his wallet. I told the guy on the phone that he’d come back, thanked him and got off the phone and let the frantic guy in. I told him that God must be watching over him because I was a Christian and I couldn’t just take his wallet or anything in it because I was accountable to God. He was so frantic that he was panting for breath – he said he’d been on the phone with his family back home in the country where he came from and he’d been so caught up in the conversation that he’d walked out without his wallet. When I was looking for his id I saw that he must have had at least a thousand dollars in there or maybe more. I saw lots of hundred dollar bills. He was an average looking guy – not like he was into anything that would be making him that kind of money. I was thinking that maybe he’d been in the bank to take it out so he could pay his rent. Whatever it was for and whoever he was, I never saw him again after that day, but I laughed all the way home because I could have really used that money and I was thinking that I may be the only person on earth with my kind of financial need who would have bothered to give it back to him.

The thing that made me laugh the most is because I’ve always been that way to one extent or another, and after I was born again it just got even more so. I really do know what is right and what is wrong, and now that I know there’s a God who I’m accountable to I have to do what is right even when I don’t want to. I was telling someone the other day how old I am, and she said I shouldn’t tell anybody because I look so much younger. But why would I lie about my age? It’s all glory to God if I look as young as I do, especially considering the life I’ve lived. He’s the one who keeps me looking younger every day, and if I pretended I was younger, what would be the point of that? Other people tell me I shouldn’t be honest about the clothing I wear and that it all comes from thrift stores – but again, to God be the glory because I dress like I have so much more than I do and it’s all because of Him. So here was this wallet and I could have just taken the money and the metro card and dropped the wallet in the mailbox, but how could I live with myself? That money would have made me feel so guilty I wouldn’t have been able to spend it with joy, and what the heck is the point of having extra money to spend unless you feel good about it?

The real kicker is that about a month later I was asked to work on a special project for my job, and they approved extra hours for me which is something that rarely happens. But this project had some extra funding attached, and I was the one who was asked to do it. I worked on that project for about three months, and I ended up making more than had been in that wallet. And the project was a fun one too, so it was a double or even triple or quadruple blessing. That’s the way God works. When we do the right thing, He blesses us even more. In Psalm 50:9-15, the Lord speaks about what He wants from us, “I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the insects in the field are mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High, and call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you and you will honor me.” The psalmist continues in verses 16-23, “But to the wicked person, God says: ‘What right have you to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips? You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you. When you see a thief you join with him; you throw in your lot with adulterers. You use your mouth for evil and harness your tongue to deceit. You sit and testify against your brother and slander your own mother’s son. When you did these things and I kept silent, you thought I was exactly like you. But I now arraign you and set my accusations before you. Consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces with no one to rescue you: Those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me, and to the blameless I will show my salvation.’”

It is really very simple what God asks of us. And it is also to me very surprising how little He asks of us. He doesn’t need anything that we have, because He is all in all. He is the Great I Am. He owns it all. And when we recognize that and truly understand it, what He does ask of us is not so hard to do. Of course in the moment we might look at a wallet that someone left on a counter and think boy, what I could do with all that money, but if we know that the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand Hills and that the world and all that is in it is His, then we also know that not only are we stealing from Him if we take that money, but He’ll also repay us for our honesty if we don’t. And I’d rather be on the receiving end of God’s blessing than to take for myself a blessing that was not really a blessing from Him.

Proverbs 9:10 tells us, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Understanding who He is and that He is the one who owns everything and has created everything will give us a healthy kind of fear – not fear in the sense that we are afraid and shaking in our shoes, but an understanding that if we choose to do what is wrong rather than what is right that He could tear us to pieces and He’d have the power and authority and the right to. If I had looked at that wallet and thought, I need this money more than this guy does, or made a judgment call that he must have been a drunken mess to have left his wallet like that, or if I’d just ignored what I knew was right and did what I wanted to do, what right would I have to the covenant promises of God? But if I do what is right, even when it’s something that I don’t really want to do, the promises of the covenant going all the way back to Abraham and to Noah before him are promises that are mine as well as all of the other promises the Lord has made to me personally. To fear the Lord simply means to respect Him, to understand who He is and what He can and will do. And when we have that kind of fear, we learn a different kind of wisdom, one that says if I do what is right everything will work out even more than fine.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan