Scarcity & Six Year Old

As I sit here today, fear and anger in this country is getting to palpable. We are mad at our leaders for not hopping into fix a financial mess, we are angry at greedy people who took and took and now we must pay. We are afraid of tomorrow and whether we will have the money we need when we need it. We want our leaders to do something but we have differing opinions on how to handle it.

As I was driving with my son, James, I was trying to translate the problems, which he did notice, into terms a six year old (in 40 days on election day he will be 6) could understand. Lately, his favorite breakfast food is Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bars. He will eat only those out of a three pack of flavors. Surely, I thought that only having one of these precious bars would convey the idea of scarcity and the fear of it. Sure enough, he got that not having a bar for him and his sister would be a bad thing and he might not be happy if he was told it was the last bar. But, then he answered in a way guaranteed to make any Christian parent happy. He didn't say he would be fighting with his sister to get the last bar. No, his response was, "Dad, we would just have to cut the bar in half and share". I thought immediately of the early Christians and the Book of Acts.

In the Book of Acts, we see the early Christians doing just that "[t]hose who owned fields or hoses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person's needs". Acts 4: 34-35 from the Message translation. God has always found a way to provide to the people. Joseph and his dreams to warn the Pharaoh and ensure that food would be stored. Manna from heaven to feed the wandering people, etc. But the message has also been, don't hoard, share, take only what you need. Wouldn't it be nice if we Christians actually lived like that now, today.

By the way, I didn't try hard enough with the cereal bar analogy. When I made it the last piece of candy, well then the gloves were off and the bidding war was ready to begin.