Rich Beyond Compare

          Lately I’ve been inundated with emails advising me of the bags full of loot sitting around just waiting for me to say, please deliver to my door.’  Apparently I am such a paragon of wondrousness that even the UN has put me at the top of their ‘Relief from Poverty’ list and desire to make me happy with a check for at least $1.5 million.  Now isn’t that just the nicest thing?  And the UN with such a huge unpaid bill of its own too.

          One such advice really tugged at my heartstrings.  It was written by a man, from his hospital bed, dying of some terrible disease, yet still wanting to tell me of the enormous pile of money waiting for me.  He wrote this missive with ‘tears in his eyes.’  Now I ask you…how incredibly sweet is that?

          Of course one could be a total cynic and question how anyone could write anything on a computer from their deathbed, but that would not be me.  I do however hope the hospital has plenty of Kleenex tissues at hand to wipe the tears from the man’s eyes before he completely soaks the bed.  I’m sure the cost of laundering stuff in Nigeria is quite expensive.

          However all of this largesse on the part of these lovely Nigerians did make me think about incredible wealth.  What would I do if I had it? I mean to have so much loot that you literally couldn’t spend it in your lifetime if you truly tried to do so.  Well that boggled my mind far too much so I settled on a usable sum.  Twenty million.  What would I do with twenty million?  And investing it to make even more millions for myself was not to be an option.

          So I started making mental lists of who would get the money and for what purpose.  By the time I had bought beautiful homes in a nice area for my two kids; set up decent trusts for the grandkids for their education and a small house or apartment for each, I was on a roll.  There would be wonderful vacations, round the world trips for everyone…travelling first class of course; a car for each of the grandkids when they turned 18 and perhaps some cash to start a business if that was on their horizon. 

          My friends wouldn’t be left out either.  Mortgages would be paid off, some lovely new appliances would be delivered for those who needed it…or perhaps didn’t need it but would like it…what fun it would all be.

          I was having such a great time with my mental shopping that I wasn’t actually taking notice of how much I was spending.  When it was all added up I found I was going to be about $1 million short!  How could that be?  Obviously the Nigerians would have to find another lottery I’d won and send me much more cash even while crying buckets of tears.

          Ah, how lovely to dream.  I walked out onto my lanai and gazed at the majestic Ko’olau mountains.  The sun was just setting behind them and a song I heard many years ago came to mind:

          ‘I’m rich, I’m rich beyond compare

          I own those mountains over there

          I own the sun, the moon, the stars….’

          I can’t remember the rest of the verse but right then, the few words I remembered said it all for me.  I don’t have a lot, but looking at God’s incredible creation, I felt so rich….and that makes me truly happy.