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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Minimum wage when I was in high school was $3.35/hour. I had a job that loaded me down with hours in the summer, too. I could make around $300 bucks ever two weeks if I worked as much as they'd let me. I did, too. I really wanted the "power booster."
For some reason, that seemed very important, and cost about $200. Well, the one I wanted did. Anyway, for those of you who don't know what a power booster is, it boosts the power for your car stereo. It makes it VERY loud and this one actually had an "equalizer" on it...and, oh, yeah...I'd be needing some new speakers, too.
So, after saving for a month I was off to the car stereo store, and by the time I got out of there with warranties and installation costs and all that jazz I was about $450 bucks in.
And, man. It was worth every penny, too.
My music was loud and it sounded great. My friends thought it was very cool and it made my car the car of choice when riding around. It impressed the girls. It made my grandma laugh out loud and cover her ears when I showed it off to her giving a ride somewhere. It let my mom know when I was getting close to home from about three blocks away. It was that loud and it really did make my music sound great (please, no quotes about equalizing sound when listening to the Sex Pistols and the Ramones--I was 16 and this all made perfect sense at the time).
Almost a year later, I was getting ready to go to work one Saturday morning (I worked at a golf course and all our work had to be completed by sunrise) and I noticed the passenger side door of my car slightly ajar.
Funny.
I thought I locked it?
Then I looked below the dash: The power booster was gone. Wires hanging. Tapes stolen.
I slammed doors.
I cursed.
I yelled.
Sure, I had insurance...but I had a $500 deductible (the part you pay before the insurance begins to cover the rest of the damage) so it was futile to make a claim.
I called the police...they didn't offer much hope.
And I was angry every time I got in my car and the radio didn't work. It really had me off my rocker for about three days. I was livid and was taking it out on everybody else. All I could think of was an entire month of work at the golf course thrown away for literally nothing. Air. I'm getting stirred up just writing about it.
Anyway, the guy that was discipling me took me to breakfast and I went into the litany of reasons I had a right to be angry. I went on and on, too. As I am wont to do, I went on a rant of epic proportions about everything from sin nature to my taxes being wasted by the suck police force in our town.
Big Dave just kept eating and let me go. By this time, he knew me well enough not to stop me.
When I finished my tirade, Big Dave said, "I know it was the best equalizer out there, and I know you worked hard for it, too. I'm sorry it got stolen. But is it worth all this? I mean, if you don't let this go at some point, you'll work yourself into some sort of stressed out ulcer and if you ever found out who it was, you might actually go to jail for what you might do to them. Brent...it's just a THING..."
Big Dave went on to remind me of all the blessings in my life and compared to my father dying and how much I'd grown in Christ in a short time and the whole deal. By the end of the breakfast I had gone from livid to disappointed, which is a bit safer of an emotion.
Then Big Dave wanted me to repent of my anger. Ugh.
Then he wanted me to repent of my attitude, which he based in Matthew 6:
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where theives break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither most nor rust destroys, and where theives do not break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."
Yeah, they're famous verses.
But they have some startling ramifications if you think about it.
For example, the contrast that there are only two places to make your investments: Earth or heaven. The earthly ones are all temporary. Kingdom investments are eternal.
What about the idea that what you spend your money on reveals where your heart really is? Jesus said that. We can tell the spiritual condition of our hearts by looking at our check book entries. Man. We really do LOVE our money and stuff.
You can't serve earthly stuff and Kingdom stuff. You will be a slave of something, so you pretty much have to choose which one you will serve. Can't be both.
And it's a spiritual decision and discipline to periodically make a conscious choice to do without something you personally want in order to make a Kingdom investment. At least I think it is. It's part of the spiritual life to deny yourself of a perfectly legitimate "want" of a THING to decide not to buy it and use that money as a gift for "Kingdom investments."
Maybe you want a CD by your favorite group that comes out today and you're headed to the music store right after school to pick it up. Maybe you decide that as a spiritual discipline that you're going to take that $15 and donate it to a mission trip, or the church, and pick up the CD next week.
See? There's nothing wrong with the CD. There's nothing wrong with stuff or things at all. You just decide to discipline yourself to remind yourself to put things nad stuff into the proper perspective. What Jesus was talking about was not the stuff or things, but the heart's desire regarding the stuff or things. Perspective.
So, for today, use the comments as a general statement about teenagers: What percentage of teenager's spending do you think goes toward eternal things? Needs--food, clothing, shelter, gas, etc.)? Self? What do you think this indicates about the hearts of suburban teens? Can anything be done to change this? If so, what?
Brent 4:32 AM
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