Monopoly.
To control everything. That’s the point of the Parker Brothers/Hasbro game, to rule the board, to own all the properties, and to gather all the money.
There’s one square we don’t want to land on, and that’s the Go to Jail space. We also hope to avoid drawing a Go to Jail card or throwing three doubles in a row. If we’re in jail, we can’t play; and if we can’t play, there’s no way to catch up in the game.
Ah, ha! the game producers said. Let’s give the players an option to get out of jail free with a special card, hence we have the Get Out of Jail Free card.
For many people, our jail is debt. Taking on a mortgage. Financing a car. Furniture payments, repairs on the house we have to pay out, and charge cards that never quite reach a zero balance.
We’re locked up tight, and the credit man has thrown away the key.
Proverbs 22:7 states it pretty well:
“The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.”
A slave is a prisoner. Jailed, with no way out. There may not be bars, but the entrapment is real.
Debt is a master, controlling us, even if we appear affluent. We find Paul’s advice in Romans 13:8:
“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
Even so, if we’re already jailed by contracts signed, money borrowed, and interest that threatens to consume us, what can we do?
We can give our money away.
Hold on, not all of it...only a little bit. A couple of bucks. The homeless man on the street, $2. That’s all. Drop a bill in the jar at the gas station for the local boy injured on his bicycle. A fiver in the Sunday school offering...that level of giving. That’s where we start.
Will it make us rich? No. Our bank account won’t magically fill up with money. There won’t be a sudden flood of checks in the mail. What it will do is slowly refocus our spending habits. Instead of how much we can spend, we’ll start thinking of how much we can give.
We see the Lord’s promise spelled out in Deuteronomy 28:12:
“The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.”
We can’t get out of jail overnight. It took us time to lock ourselves inside, and it’ll take time to use our key. We do have the key, our Get Out of Jail card. It’s found in the Bible in the life principles that keep our eyes focused on what’s right and what’s good.
Living a righteous, Godly life isn’t a magic carpet ride. Our rules for the road are found in the written Word of God.
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