gold

Who steals my purse steals trash.

The high school kid smiled wryly at us for just a second as we moved closer to his checkout stand. Then he turned his attention back to the young lady beside the register. He had just scanned four tubes of a popular health & beauty product for her.

“That will be twenty-one dollars and seventy-six cents, Ma’am.”

Silently, the lady reached into her wallet and took out a coupon. Beep! He scanned the bar code into the machine. The total was instantly three dollars lower.

He turned to her to tell her the new amount, but all she did was pull another coupon from her wallet. Each time he completed the scan on one, she pulled out another, until there were five coupons on the counter. He dutifully scanned each one in. With the fifth piece of paper though, the machine let out a raucous screech, instead of the cutesy beeping sound we were becoming accustomed to.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am. You can’t use that coupon since you already used the others.”

She was incredulous. Handing the printed coupon back to him, she insisted he try it again. He obliged, but the machine screeched one more time. The young man tried patiently to explain that she couldn’t use a coupon on an item for which she had already presented a coupon.

Now, she wasn’t just incredulous; she was miffed. She snatched the offending coupon up off the counter and stuffed it into her wallet. Quickly paying the nine dollar total (for twenty-one dollars worth of product), she strode off in a huff, her husband trailing behind.

When we completed our own transaction with the poor young man, the Lovely Lady and I headed for the exit, only to run across the lady and her husband standing near the door still. She was pointing to the receipt in her hand and gesturing angrily back toward the cash register. It seemed the young clerk wasn’t quite finished with the interchange. We didn’t hang around to see the conclusion.

People are passionate about money, aren’t they?

Did you read the quote which opened this article? It’s from a play by William Shakespeare, entitled Othello. Mr. Shakespeare is actually trying to bolster up an argument about the value of a good name. But, in doing that, he gives a fairly accurate description of the value of money.

Trash. He calls it trash.

Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands. . .

The Bard of Avon wasn’t the first to come to this conclusion. He put it differently than King Solomon, many centuries before him, did. A little differently.

Whoever loves money never has enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
This too is meaningless.
(Ecclesiastes 5:10 ~ NIV)

Trash. Meaningless.

Jesus walked among the wealthy and the poor. He enjoyed the plenty of food and fellowship as well as knowing the poverty of homelessness. He also used the word slave in relationship to money. But unlike Mr. Shakespeare many centuries later, Jesus didn’t refer to money as the slave.

No. He said that we are slaves to it. Or to God. (Matthew 6:24 ~ NIV)

We choose. But, servants we will be.

If you’re like me, you will immediately state the obvious:

I want to be the servant of God. I will never serve money.

But again, if you’re like me, the resolve lasts as long as it takes to encounter someone who tries to take advantage of you.

Did you pay attention to the lady in the story above? Some of us read her plight with a sympathetic spirit. That greedy corporation! What would a few dollars mean to them? Why would they cheat her like that?

If we stop and contemplate for a moment, however, the truth begins to dawn. The company was selling the product for a fair market price. The company issued the coupons which reduced that price by more than half.

The discount was a gift to her! A gift from the very company of whom she demanded more.

How like her we are. Every single thing we have—every possession, every dollar, every benefit—each one is a gift from a loving and benevolent Heavenly Father. Every good gift comes down from Him. (James 1:17 ~ NIV)

Every good gift.

Somehow though, the good gifts He gives become, in our minds, our right—our birthright if you will—and we desire more. In Solomon’s words above, we are never satisfied.

But, like dragon’s gold, we lie on our hoarded wealth and become greedy, selfish dragons ourselves. I can’t help but see that selfish, hateful boy—from C.S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader—Eustace Scrubb, in my mind as I consider our plight.

The self-centered boy wandered away from his traveling companions and found the treasure trove of a dragon which had just died. Crawling up on the stack of gold and jewels, he fell asleep.

A funny thing happens to the boy while he sleeps on his astounding find, perhaps not unlike the transformation we go through as we hold our earthly treasure close.

Here are Mr. Lewis’s words: Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he has become a dragon himself.

I wonder if I’ve already said too much. Perhaps I’ve stood on this soap box longer than I should tonight.

But, after all, I know what is in my heart. It’s not a pretty sight. I also know the conversations I’ve read and heard recently—conversations which convince me that what is in my heart is not exclusive to only me.

It may be time for the Lion to do His work in removing the dragon scales from around my heart. They’ve been growing for awhile. It will likely take some doing.

It might be a little painful, as well.

But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
(I John 3:17 ~ NASB)

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
(from The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien ~ English author/educator ~ 1892-1973)

Dust are our frames, and, gilded dust our pride.
(Alfred Lord Tennyson ~ 19th century British poet)

The newlyweds moved into the little two bedroom frame house and began to learn about life together. They laughed. They cried. They argued—a little. They cried some more.

Mostly, they laughed.

Sometimes, all they had to do to find something to laugh about was to look across the lane to a tiny house just like theirs. The elderly lady who lived there was a nice neighbor, as friendly as they could hope for, but she had a strange habit.

She dusted her yard. With a dust mop.

They laughed and wondered what possible benefit there could be to dusting one’s yard. Now, nearly forty years later, the young man (who is growing old) wishes he had asked the lady herself. Well? Who wouldn’t wonder why she dusted the lawn?

It doesn’t make much sense, does it? The yard was just dirt and grass, and more dirt than it was grass.

He has some questions still:

How would one know when the job is completed?

Is it a job which must be done daily? Weekly?

Would the neighbors notice if the job were left undone?

He’ll never know the answer to his questions since the dear lady has been in Heaven many years now. But, the couple still laughs when the seemingly useless task comes to mind. Surely it was a complete waste of her time.

It’s a futile thing to do, dusting dust.

Kind of like painting tombs, isn’t it?

The Teacher laughed at the old men with their paint brushes. The graves of His day weren’t much like ours. Caves and hollows in the hillsides, covered with stones to keep out the varmints and grave-robbers—that was all they were. No amount of paint could quell the stench that wafted to passersby.

Whoa! I wonder what died!

I say it to myself frequently as I ride my bicycle in ever-widening circuits around our little town, especially along the narrow country lanes. I can’t see the culprits, but I can certainly smell the odor left behind by death. Skunks, raccoons, o’possums, even the occasional armadillo—all add their noxious fumes to the fresh country air.

I wonder if the white-wash on the stones over the grave openings fooled anyone back then. I’m thinking not many were hoodwinked into thinking there was anything desirable under that big white rock.

Dust mops and paint brushes are useful tools. For the right purpose.

The high-school-aged boy lugged the heavy black case in from the parking lot last week. He seemed a little embarrassed to be bringing the huge instrument into the music store.

“Could you get me a lyre to fit this tuba?” he asked. “I bought one the other day, but it’s the wrong shape.”

I laughed humorlessly. It is a problem I have struggled with for many years. I never seem to remember the essentials from year to year, though.

I pulled out a long, straight brass-looking lyre from the appropriate location.

“Give me a minute. I’ll make it work.”

They say pride goes before a fall. They are right.

I put the tail of the music holder into my vise and pushed on the other end of it, bending it in the approximate direction I knew it needed to go.

Snap!

The long rod, a foot long just a moment ago, was now only eight inches long.

That can’t be right! Brass is soft and bends easily! How could I break it so quickly?

You already know the answer, don’t you?

It’s not made of brass—only covered with brass plating. Underneath? Pot metal. Cheap trashy metal made from a mixture of soft metallic substances, cast into the shape of a costlier steel and then plated to be appealing to buyers.

Whisking the dust away from dirt doesn’t make it any cleaner.

Painting a stinking grave doesn’t make it any less offensive.

Plating pot metal gives it no additional strength whatsoever.

Dust are our frames,…

Lord Tennyson understood the premise. Who would argue that we are, indeed, dust? Even those white-washed graves can’t keep our bodies from returning to their beginnings. Eventually.

And yet, here we stand—arrogant things—boasting of who we are and what we have done. Merely dirt, yet we would have anyone else believe there is no longer any residual dirt underneath the decorated surface.

…and, gilded dust our pride.

Gilding causes the article it covers to appear as pure gold. Pure gold!

There is a test for gold, just as bending will show the difference between brass and pot metal. The test for gold?

Job knew the answer to that. And, when He has tried me, I shall come forth as pure gold.

Through the fire, the mettle of the whole piece will be known.

I’m not sure I’m ready for the fire. Yet.

I want to be. I want to be sure that I will prove to be pure gold, just like Job.

But, I’m confident there are a fair number of refinements which will need to happen first.

I want to be ready for the fire.

We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.
(from The Breakfast Club ~ American movie ~ 1985)

Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.
(I Corinthians 3:12,13 ~ NASB)

He's Taken Leave

Random wanderings with Paul Phillips

Dragon Gold

Painting the Dirt