A Place Called Peace

Source: Callaway, Phil, Family Squeeze, Multnomah Books, Colorado Springs, CO, 2008, p. 108-110.


"We are left with a choice. Store up for ourselves treasures on earth where they need fixing, storing, insuring, painting, maintaining, rustproofing, and constant attention. Or we can follow Jesus' advice in Matthew 6:20 and store up for ourselves 'treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal(NIV).'

Here are a few ideas to start us down the road to debt-free living and a place called Peace.

1. Take a child by the hand and go for a walk. Make sure it's your child.

2. If you are in debt: a)make a budget, b)pour lighter fluid on your credit cards, c)light them, and d) then use cash for all purchases. Ask older people about cash; they know what it is.

3. Buy bottled water every twenty-three years. At the corner store near us, you can buy 'a taste of paradise' water from Fiji on sale for $1.50 per bottle or $11.36 a gallon. We spend less than one-third of a cent per gallon for water that comes out of the tap twelve steps from our bed. If you buy two bottles of water a day, you can save $1,095 a year by taking along your own plastic bottle and filling it with tap water--water that most of the world would give just about anything to drink (by the way, Pepsi recently admitted that Aquafina comes from...are you ready?...a tap).

4. Boycott Starbucks. If you buy five lattes per week for a year, you will spend $1,040. Stop it. If you need caffeine $40 worth of beans at Safeway and suck on five a day. My boss does this, and I rarely catch him napping.

5. Get married and stay married. According to a report by the Journal of Sociology (get ready, big surprise ahead), marriage actually increases your emotional and financial health. 'Scrapping a marriage robs you of wealth,' claims the study. After surveying nine thousand people, they found that divorce reduces a people's wealth by 77 percent and that married people increased their wealth about 4 percent per year.

6. Avoid frugal-living books. I picked one up recently, and here is a sampling of the brilliant advice: Buy a goat for milk! (I kid you not--no pun intended.) Invite the grandparents to visit--they'll bring gifts for the kids! Don't take your children shopping! Cut open your toothpaste tube! Reuse your trash bags! The book was on sale for twenty bucks!

7. Support your church, missionaries you know, needy people, and organizations that are making a differences.

8. Leave the TV off during dinner. Don't hurry through dinner. If you do, it might hurry through you.

9. Teach your children that we need money to buy things. If you don't have money, we can't buy things.

10. Put memories ahead of money.

11. Meditate on Micah 6:8, Revised Materialist's Edition: 'What does the Lord require of you? That you act justly, that you mercy, and that you run, run, run like a gerbil.' No! That you 'walk numbly with your God.'"

Source: Callaway, Phil, Family Squeeze, Multnomah Books, Colorado Springs, CO, 2008, p. 108-110.