Ann Brenoff posted a couple of months ago about an armored truck in Indianapolis that dropped a few boxes of cash on the street. People slammed on their brakes, leaped from their cars, and grabbed as much money as they could. Then they took off with their new-found blessing. At least that must be the way they saw it. I’m a little shocked, although I probably shouldn’t be, that people would not see that as stealing. It took a guy picking what was left up, putting it in his car, and waiting for the police for people to stop taking the money. Ann feels that this is a sign of the economical times hitting people so hard that they would be willing to steal. Hmmmm.
We were on vacation in Orlando sitting out at the pool waiting to watch one of the Harry Potter movies on a big screen they put out there. The movie is so not important to this story, but it was pretty cool to watch a movie on a big screen at a pool. Anyway, we were working on our iPads when a couple from England sat down next to us. The husband immediately made a comment about our iPads and shared how they both have them. He then ran back to his room, grabbed his iPad, ran back, and began to show us how to “jailbreak” it and get whatever applications you want. He then made the comment, “why not, they’ve been stickin’ it to us for years!” I can’t help but wonder who they are. Where do you find “they”? Should there be a www.they.com that you could blame for all of your hardships in life? To the best of my knowledge, most of the they’s are people or small business that created an application that make my life either easier or more fun. I’m not really sure how they have “stuck” it to me for so long. Maybe I’m ignorant about how I’m being taken advantage of by the guy who created iThoughts, which makes my life so much easier, and he only charged me $9.99 for it. Hmmmm.
While I think the issue of stealing is deeper than just hard economic times, (I’m Christian you see) I do know that when you follow God’s principles for handling money, you don’t need to steal. In fact, you have no desire to steal. Crazy thing is that when you come to the realization who it actually belongs to, a natural result is you becoming more of a giver. Does that mean you won’t fall on hard times, heck no! It just means your dependency becomes less on survival like wild animals, and more on trust that He will provide for you every day. “Well that’s easy to say sitting where you are now, on the other side of this kind of stuff!” Ha! I laugh at you! (Which is really me since I’m writing this) If that’s what you’re thinking, they you’re definitely someone who doesn’t know my history personally. More importantly, if you feel that way, then you’re most likely in the situation I’m talking about. Try something different. Try changing. Try spending time on your knees asking for help. You’ll be amazed at the outcome.
I would love to hear your comments on either of these two situations, or some that you have experienced. I may just put a post out of those comments in response to this post. Let’s see.
Chris, I too am a christian and don’t believe stealing is right…however, if I found money on the street and didn’t know who it belonged to and there was no “lost and found” place to turn it into, I would take it. Maybe I don’t know all the details of how this money got on the street and if the people knew it was from an armored truck. Do you think that that would be stealing?
hahaha…well, technically we are supposed to turn it into the police. After a period of time, if nobody claims it, it’s yours. 🙂
In the case in my post, people watched it fall out of the truck.