What If ... You Were Given a Million Dollars?

 I grew up in a small farming village southwest of Boston, MA. After walking home from school, I used to watch on our family's B & W television, an afternoon weekly broadcast. Titled simply The Millionaire. This story line involved a wealthy benefactor who instructed the same courier each week to track down a certain person in our country and give them a check for a million dollars.

Recently I went to Google and asked how many millionaires are in the United States. Wow. Google says the US currently has 22 million millionaires. That's 8.8% of US adults. 33% of those adults are women. Having $1 million puts you in the top 10% of wealth in the US. 22 million individuals, residing in the US, are in the top 1% of ultra high net worth individuals worldwide. Many of these individuals are film stars, national athletes,  self-improvement guru's, tech giants, mega-land owners, self-made business leaders, sweepstake winners, born into money, stock brokers, corporate CEO's and CFO's, regardless of ethnic background. What if you were given a million dollars?

In 2010 there were 3.1 millionaires in our country. Our free market system has historically encouraged competition and financial achievement. Maybe with all the ways one become a millionaire today - it's not that cracked up to be. Yet there's a powerful lesson to be gained in this discussion.

Put yourself into that television plot when I was about 9 years old, in the 4th grade. A stranger comes to your front door, rings a door bell or lifts and releases a hard metal rapper. You open the door and he introduces himself as representing an unnamed individual. With no strings attached he offers you a check made out to you. What would you do? It would be perfectly normal to question the integrity of this intention. You might think, even say 'what's the gimmick'? Why you? You accept the check, the individual leaves your front door, and you are left with your questions. What do you do?

Now comes the 64 million dollar question - as Grouch Marx used to say on an early game show. Do you bank it? In fact will your bank cash it, even with your name as the beneficiary? Do you spend it,... or give a portion of it away? All these questions presume we are masters of of own destiny. Given just a snippet of the world's news, I say whatever happens - we're not the masters of our destiny. A million dollars, whether it comes by free-market profit, winning a sweepstakes or lotto giveaway, or receiving a check from a stranger, does not start with us.

Psalm 50:10 mentions God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. In the day those words were written and attributed to an individual named Asaph; herded sheep and goats determined much of the economy of those times. God still owns the cattle on a thousand hills, as well as overseeing his laws of supply and demand..

"Now one can serves two masters. For you will hate the one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money". (Luke 16:13) If you or I were given a million dollars without any merit on our part, how might we respond? Yes, it would be perfectly normal to use it for ourselves. Yet there are 37.9 million Americans living below the poverty line. That's 14.6% of the US population. What if we were to imagine a greater insight, that this gift could serve  others before ourselves?  If you are already a millionaire, why not consider paying a portion forward to someone trapped in poverty. There's probably a million ways that portion of your million dollars could free another from losing whatever little is barely sustaining them. 

Be well.