Family and Finances: Episode 7, Part 3

You know, we receive hand-me-downs sometimes, and I look back through the years how God's provided for us with different hand-me-downs. You remember one Christmas, Ann, where we didn't have enough money to buy gifts. We had no money to buy gifts for the boys. Their two oldest were in elementary school, and gosh, I thought, what in the world are we going to do? And then just out of the blue, a couple from church. Yeah, a couple from church, and what's so touching about it, that couple, they were a black couple. He was an engineer. We were friends with them. But their oldest son, who was a football star, died his senior year from sitting on top of a car that was moving. It was a pickup truck, I think. A bunch of kids at graduation. And he just fell off and hit his head on the ground at a slow speed and died. And this was shortly after their son had died that they sort of adopted our boys into their heart, and they took care of our Christmas. And our children really never missed out on one thing. They never. No, they took great care of us, and God provided for us. I remember I was wearing a shirt, and this is just a couple years ago, and a neighbor asked if we wanted his shirts because we had boys all about the same size as he was. Well, they didn't fit the boys, but they fit me. And so I wore one of them to work, and I was very happy in that shirt. It was a hand-me-down, and I went out for lunch, and somebody said to me, hey, I didn't know you graduated from that college. And I said, what are you talking about? I didn't graduate from that college that he was mentioning. And I looked down, and on the cuff of the shirt I was wearing was the logo of the college

of my neighbor that I didn't even know it was on the shirt. And I had to say, well, this is a hand-me-down shirt I'm wearing today. But it didn't matter to me. You know, I was happy to do that. I think that contentment helps us to see things from an eternal perspective. The Bible says we came in naked. That means without any possessions, without even clothing. We leave without anything. And so our goal is not to be accumulators. Our goal is to be faithful stewards, whether we have a lot or a little, and be prepared to stand before the Lord and be evaluated by how we managed whatever we had. If you have a lot, you have a greater responsibility to manage it more faithfully. And it's interesting when Paul talks about how to be content. He mentioned two things, food and clothing. Now, if you think about that, those are the essentials for our life. We have to have something to eat. We have to be clothed in some way. And he said basically everything above that is just something you want. Those are your two needs. And I've been all over the world, Ann, and I've seen God provide those two needs faithfully to every person, no matter what. Sometimes there's natural disasters or challenges to get access, but those are the things that God provides on a daily basis. And we can learn to say, thank you, Lord, for what you've given us. And I had to learn to remove things that caused me temptations, like magazine subscriptions, whether it was Architectural Digest, Southern Living, magazines that I enjoyed reading. But they made me want to fix my home the way the pictures in the magazines looked. So I had to remove those things. And now I think young people see things on Instagram and Pinterest, and it can really create desires.

Well, for sure. It does for me. I mean, I'm vulnerable to that all the time. The more, better, bigger, faster, newer, cooler, safer. You just come up with an adjective, and I'm vulnerable to be sold on that. I have two weaknesses when it comes to spending that I've been able to manage pretty well, I think. We'll see what you think about this. I like men's watches, particularly Swiss men's watches. And, you know, I... Just admire them. I admire the craftsmanship, the workmanship. There's times that I will be in an airport and go in those duty-free shops or some high-end shop and I'll try them on and I'll look at it and I'll think there's no way that I need this watch and I'm just tempted thinking about it. And so I'll take it off, put it away and sometimes I'll take a picture of it and just admire it and in all these years I've never bought one. But I've wanted one all these years so in some ways the desire hasn't changed. I've just been able to successfully manage it and I know it's not good to go in and try them on. Well and it's an appreciation too for the craftsmanship in those. Just like art shops. We love to go in and look at art and sure there are pieces we've thought oh that would look so beautiful in our home but we resist. I'll take a picture of good art and maybe make a screen saver out of it just to look at it for a while. I also have a policy that I don't wear a watch. That's expensive. I won't spend more than $200 on a watch because it keeps time perfectly. That's what it's for and it does just fine if I lose it or it gets stolen or broken then

I'm not upset about it. And so I've been able to experience contentment with that. But it's not that I don't struggle with that at times. That there are times when you and I have to talk to each other about what we want and what our goals are and what is it that's really driving the decision to buy something. But when you're able to say everything's okay right now, maybe you're living in a rental and you can say my ultimate goal isn't to get out of the rental. I can still be happy whether I'm in a rental or whether I own my home. It's not complacency. Contentment is not complacency. You can have a goal. You can have a focus. You can have something you're reaching for but don't let it rob you of what you have today. Eleanor Roosevelt had that great quote that yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, today is a gift. And today is all we have and especially as we age we realize very, very clearly that we should live one day at a time. Yes and I think just being reminded whether it's through pictures or looking back over journal entries of people less fortunate than us, you know, get our minds off ourself helps me anyway. A friend of mine that's learned to be content and also generous says he imagines that he is a cook for God's army and that he's supplying meals to God's army. And the last thing he would ever want to do would be to eat a disproportionate amount of the food that should go to keep the troops fed. And so that is one of the ways that he monitors his own cravings for stuff. And he said if I crave a lot of things then I can't be as generous to others that I think God wants me to be. Now this person would make me look like a novice. When we went out for lunch and he was explaining some of his way that he and his wife have

become super content, his car was a fleet car issued to him by the company and it had hand cranked windows. And I hadn't been in a car with hand cranked windows in a long, long time. And we think, wow, how could they do that? Well, if you're content it's just rolling down the window, it doesn't have to be an automatic button. You know, that's just one less thing to fix. How often do we roll down the windows anyway? And he was perfectly content with that simple car with a simple hand cranked window.