Spend It Wisely

 

My wife and I volunteer on the counting committee at church.  You wouldn’t think that a real behind the scenes job like that would provide much opportunity for funny stuff.  But you’d be wrong – and I’m not just talking about “spreadsheet” humor…you know the kind of humor that only those of us who suffer from ONC (obsessive number crunching) find amusing.

Let’s face it.  We as people are funny, most of the time unintentionally so.  We’ve seen IOU’s inside the envelope,  illegible scrawls so bad that no one could decipher who gave those funds, Elvis checks (checks with Elvis’ picture on it, not checks written by him), and the blank for your name completed as “see inside”.  Funny you would name a kid like that…

The one I liked was the game where the husband or wife would mark on their envelope “check in wife’s envelope” or “check in husband’s envelope” which then assumes that (a) you know his/her spouse and (b) you can locate the spouse’s envelope with a check that doesn’t match the outside. Thankfully, we did away with that when each family got an envelope box, not each individual.  Cuts down on costs, too.

People will occasionally write notes on the envelopes, kids draw on them, etc.  But the point of this post is not the funny stuff that happens behind the scenes.  Several years ago, I was counting, and on the back of the envelope, a little girl about 9 or 10 years old had written this note that I can still quote to this day:  “Dear men who take up the offering, here is my dollar, please spend it wisely”.

As stewards of God’s resources, whether for a church or as individuals, is there a better stewardship lesson anywhere?  Now, about that budget…