I once asked my father if he would give me a weekly allowance. After all, many of the kids in my school were getting allowances from their parents and I thought I deserved an allowance as well.
I was surprised by my father’s response.
“I give you a great allowance here everyday.”
I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about and so I asked him to explain it to me.
“I allow you to live in this house, I allow you to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in this house, I allow you to play outside all that you want. You have a great allowance and you should be thankful.”
That was not the allowance I was thinking of and I suppose from my father’s point of view he had a good point.
Then he added something that has been with me the rest of my life.
“You don’t earn it, you can’t spend it.”
That was a rule he went by and I have come to appreciate that throughout my life.
Many people spend what they have not earned and I suppose they do not really appreciate what they have. If you have to earn it before you can spend it, then that introduces a level of appreciation that most people do not have.
Throughout my life I have had to work with that philosophy, “You don’t earn it, you can’t spend it.” In some regards, it has been a little difficult, but in the long run, I have appreciated buying what I have earned.
This has divided itself into about four different categories.
I. The Soda Pop Bottles
When I was young soda pop, as it was called then, came in glass bottles. I don’t think there were any plastic bottles at that time and I don’t remember any soda pop coming in a tin can.
The important thing about a soda pop bottle was that it had value to it. The soda companies recycled all of their bottles and therefore would pay you 5¢ for every bottle you would return. That naturally opened itself up for a little business boy to start up his own business.
I would get on my bicycle and travel up and down the roads looking for empty soda pop bottles. When I got five bottles, which would equal 25¢, I would head for the little country store just up the road from our house.
For 25¢, I could buy a bottle of root beer pop and a pint of vanilla ice cream. On a hot summer afternoon what could be better.
I would take my five bottles in to Mrs. Hershey and she would take those bottles and then give me a quarter. Now, I did not do all that work just for money, I exchanged it for the root beer soda pop and a pint of vanilla ice cream.
When the transaction was completed, I would go out, sit on the front porch and enjoy the delicacies that my 25¢ afforded me.
Now the most amazing thing about this transaction was, when I was finished, I would throw away the ice cream box and take my root beer soda pop bottle up to Mrs. Hershey and I would exchange it for a nickel. And so, my 25¢ treat only cost me 20¢.
I walked out of that old country store with a nickel in my pocket. Do you know how delightful it is to walk down the street with a nickel in your pocket?
The thing that I learned from this adventure is that you work for something and sometimes you get more than what you really pay for. The blessing is that earning can sometimes be larger than the buying.
II.The Potato Field Job
Not too far down the road from where I lived was a Mennonite who had a potato farm. In the month of August, the potatoes would be ready to harvest and so this farmer would hire some of us kids to pick potatoes for him.
We would show up at his barn and he would give us a pack of numbers, which was associated with our name. We would go out to the field, pick up a basket and start putting in potatoes and when the basket was filled we would stick our number on it and move on to the next basket. We usually had approximately 50 of these cards with our number on it. He would pay us 25¢ for each basket that we filled. If I could fill all of my numbers I could take home that night $12.50. That was a lot of money.
Out in the potato field, there were many strange things going on. There were many snakes that would run all over the place and you had to be careful not to get caught by one.
The reason there were so many snakes was because there were hundreds of mice along with mice nests in that field. When the field was plowed up so that we could get the potatoes, it also exposed all of these mice nests.
Most of the kids working the field were Mennonites. And according to them, they had to dress very modestly. They had to wear long sleeve shirts that were buttoned at the sleeve and buttoned all the way up to the top of the neck.
I never could figure out how they could do it on an August afternoon when it was so hot. Many of us “Philistines” would take off our shirt because it was so hot. But not so with these Mennonites.
Now, I never was a part of what happened. I never did it and I never had it done to me and I never approved of it.. Some of the guys that worked in the field had a little too much time on hand which ended up getting them into trouble.
Whenever one of them would run across a nest of mice, he would grab a handful and along with his partner would sneak up behind one of these Mennonite boys. The one guy would grab the back of the boy’s pants and pull it and the other guy would stuff the mice down the boy’s trousers.
Then that Mennonite boy would begin what some people called The Mennonite Strip Tease Polka. That Mennonite kid would divulge himself of all of his clothing and start dancing down the row screaming at the top of his lungs.
What I learned from my potato field experience was that everybody is shadowed by hypocrisy. Given the right experience, anybody would do just about anything. Hypocrisy is one of the curses of humanity.
I begin to think of myself a little bit and wonder where my hypocrisy shadow was. Because I know given the right circumstances, (a handful of mice down my pants) my hypocrisy would show.
What I have earned throughout my life can easily be exposed for the hypocrisy that it really is.
III. Grit Newspaper Salesman
I then moved on to something a little more to my liking and that was being a Grit Newspaper Salesman. This newspaper was very popular all across the country, particularly in the 1960s.
I signed up and was the local salesman for the grit newspaper. Of course, I had to build my own customer platform. The newspaper cost 25¢ of which I was able to keep 15¢. In a few years, I was able to build my customers up to 60. That meant I would make about $9 each week plus tips which occasionally brought it up to $12 on a good week.
I enjoyed it and got a lot of pleasure in that work.
One Sunday our pastor was talking about tithing and how important it was for Christians to commit themselves to this kind of discipline.
I thought about it for a week and I came up with my own scheme. Instead of tithing my money, I would commit to giving every penny I received from my customers. Up to that point, I did not receive many pennies. After all, most people had a quarter available to them.
The week following my decision to make this kind of a commitment started out very strangely.
My first customer said, “I’m so sorry but all I have today are pennies. Would you be able to take these pennies? In fact, I’ll give you 10 extra pennies for your trouble.”
I smiled because this was the first time anything like this ever happened to me.
I begin to think something was going wrong when customer after customer gave me pennies. Not all of them gave me all pennies, but by the end of the day half of my money was in pennies.
By the end of the month when I counted all the change, about one third of my money was in pennies. That Sunday I took in a bag full of pennies and handed it to the treasure.
Following that month, I still got some pennies, but my tips from the customers almost doubled.
The thing I learned about that was my commitment to God earns me the right to celebrate his faithfulness. At first, it looks like a tragedy, but in the long run what I earned with God was what I was able to spend for God.
IV. The Muskrat Trapping Business
One of the interesting ways in which I earned money, especially for Christmas, was muskrat trapping. The trapping season started around Thanksgiving, which would give me plenty of time to make money for my Christmas shopping.
A trap cost $5 and each muskrat would bring in $2.50. So I needed two muskrats to pay for the trap and the restless profit. Every year I would buy a new trap. I got to the point where I had four working traps for my muskrat trapping business.
I would start out early in the morning and set my traps in places where I knew there were muskrats.
The next morning I would get up around five o’clock, go out and check all of my traps. Usually I could expect one muskrat per day, but not always.
I would bring the muskrat back, skin it, put it on a stretching board and let it dry.
On Saturday, I had to collect all of my traps and bring them home because Sunday was the Lord’s Day and we weren’t allowed to trap on the Lord’s Day.
By Christmas time, I usually had around 20 muskrats, which was worth about $50. That was my Christmas shopping money.
Christmas Eve is when we went shopping.
In the morning, my dad took my brother and sister and went looking for a Christmas tree. Their job was to get one and set it up in the house. We took it all down New Year’s Day.
This was my first Christmas shopping experience and so my mother took me along with her. Do you know what it’s like to have 50 bucks in your pocket? Money that you actually earned yourself.
We spent all day shopping, buying Christmas presents for our family and it was a wonderful experience.
At the end just as we were ready to go home my mother said, “I don’t think I have enough wrapping paper for all of these presents. Let’s stop and get some more wrapping paper just in case.”
We parked behind the store, went in and she got all the wrapping paper that she needed.
When we came out and approached the car my mother said, “Didn’t you close the back door of the car?”
I could see it was ajar and when we got there, I opened it up and to my surprise the backseat of our car was completely empty. Somebody stole all of our Christmas presents.
It was too late to start shopping again, plus, all of my money was gone.
We would go home and greet the rest of the family who were shocked to hear the story of the presents that were stolen.
It was a sad night because we were not able to put presents under the Christmas tree.
We had our Christmas Eve dinner and then went to our church for the Christmas Eve service.
When I went to bed that night I was hoping that there was something about the Santa Claus story and that in the morning we would wake up with Christmas presents all under the tree.
We woke up the next morning to an empty Christmas tree and there was a lot of sadness in that house.
My mother made hot chocolate for us while we sat there groveling in our own disappointment.
Then I had an idea. Where ideas come from, I will never know.
“Dad,” I said.
He looked at me with a sad face and said, “Yes.”
“You should’ve seen the present that I bought you.”
Then I went on exaggerating about his present and how it would’ve made his life so happy and all of the things that would really bring joy to his life.
“Mom, you should’ve seen the present that I bought you. Something you would have loved to use and it would’ve been a great deal for you.
I was flying high in the cloud of exaggeration.
Then I went around to my brother Steve and my sister Pat.
It wasn’t long before they were laughing.
Then my brother Steve said, who did not go shopping, “Dad, you should’ve seen the present I got you.” And he went off on a trail of exaggeration that made everybody in that room laugh.
Perhaps somebody sitting in the shadows in that room would have said, “They’re lying that’s not the truth.”
What I learned was that exaggeration is a way to deal with certain things that go wrong. Exaggeration has a way of twisting a bad experience into an experience of laughter and joy
Conclusion
If you earn it, you can spend it any way that you want to. The great joy of life comes from reaping what you sow.
Maybe that’s what Paul meant when he writes in 2 Corinthians 9:6-8.
6But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
7Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.
8And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:
This was beautifully illustrated to me on my grandfather’s mountain farm. Every summer I would spend a little bit of time with my grandfather helping him on his farm. He had about six milk cows and I would help him with it.
My job was to take the manure out of the stalls and put it out in the barnyard on the huge manure pile. Every fall my grandfather would take that manure and spread it on his fields as fertilizer.
I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with cow manure, but you need to leave your nose at home.
One day my grandfather said to me, “Come over here I want to show you something.”
We walked around the manure pile and on the other side was this beautiful flower about halfway up. My grandfather called it a mountain Lily. It had red, blue and yellow colors throughout and it was huge.
Thinking about that mountain Lily my grandfather explained to me that the mountain Lily is not a reflection of the manure, rather the manure helped the Lily become the beautiful Lily it was.
Life is full of manure and so many times people just wallow in the manure. There is the other side of the manure where there is a mountain Lily. And the thing I ask is simply this, have you discovered your mountain Lily?
You cannot spend it unless you’ve earned it.
When I collected the soda pop bottles and traded them in, I did not trade it in for soda pop bottles. When I got the money for the soda pop bottles, I did not trade that money in for more money, but rather for a bottle of root beer soda pop and a pint of ice cream.
There is no correlation between my soda pop and ice cream and the empty soda pop bottles I found along the road.
There is no correlation between your happiness and joy and the situation you find yourself in life. That manure pile that you find yourself in is an opportunity for a mountain Lily to grow.
What you earn does not determine what you buy it only determines that you now have the ability to buy.
