(From) 5 Jan 86 (“egad!” As my dad would say – that was 30 years ago!)
Hello from the Pastor (by Reverend Ernest Richter)
We all want to be millionaires. We dream about it. It’s one of our fantasies. We go from rags to riches in one blinding flash. And we do it in a dazzling variety of ways. In one dream we win the California Lottery. With a one dollar ticket! That we found in the parking lot of the market!
In another fantasy we inherit our fortune from a long lost relative. We didn’t even know we had a rich relative, but it seems that he knew us and fixed his fortune on us because we so impressed him with our sterling virtues. He couldn’t wait to die and leave us everything.
One of my favorite fantasies has me uncovering a vast fortune in gold and jewels in the sand at Moonlight Beach. At first I see only a few loose pieces of gold in the sand, but as I begin to gather them I uncover more and more until I have buckets full of priceless treasure! And all at my fingertips.
You no doubt have your own special rags to riches fantasies, your own favorites. But you mustn’t let yourself get too carried away in your dreaming because, as you surely know, very few millionaires make it over night. The California Lottery may quicken your pulse a bit, but it’s not likely to fatten your wallet.
The awful truth about wealth is that you usually have to aquire it the old fashioned way – you earn it! By the sweat of your brow! Over a long and arduous and discouraging and difficult and disappointing period of time. You have to dig for gold! Not in the sand of Moonlight Beach but in the rugged and lonely desert mountains. You have to work, work, work! And then one day, as if by magic, you find that you are fabulously wealthy. And it’s no dream. You don’t get calluses like that in dreams. You don’t get money that way either. (- The End)
Proverbs 14:23 “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” -NIV
