On Being Rich

This story starts twenty one years ago with a set of Christian kids albums called “Psalty the Singing Songbook.” Psalty was a big blue hymnal with arms, legs and a steady tenor voice that went around teaching kids what praising the Lord from your heart is all about. My wife used to listen to those albums when she was a little girl and when she was six years old and left Tennessee with her family for China and the mission field, Psalty had already left an indelible mark on her little heart. On their way to China, Christy’s family stopped off in Italy to visit her Uncle Tom, Aunt Tina and cousins who were already missionaries in Milan. Tom says he’ll never forget seeing Patty, Christy and his kids singing this one particular Psalty song… He said he cried because he thought they didn’t even know how much they were about to need those words in China. The song is called “Child of the King” and goes like this:

“Lord I don’t have fancy toys like other little girls and boys/ My clothes are faded and torn, my shoes are scuffed up and all worn/ Though the world might think I’m poor, I am rich ‘cause I have You Lord/ And I am a child of the King, if I have You, then I have everything/ Though the world might think that I am poor, I am rich ‘cause I have You Lord…”

Okay, fast forward to 2003 when we found out we were having our first baby… Christy jumped online and found the entire collection of Psalty albums on 10 CDs and guess what… now our little girls are learning to praise the Lord from the big blue talking book! Well, the other day I was reading 2 Corinthians 6 and came to the part where Paul said that he was “…sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” I stopped, wrote it down and thought about those words all day and just wanted my heart to be confident with that perspective. I wanted to stop worrying about bills, taxes, plumbing and savings and just know what it is to be rich in Christ.

When I got home from work Christy said, “Oh man, Anna said the sweetest thing today… She said, “Mom, I am rich because I have my favorite boy down in my heart!” (By the way, “my favorite boy” is what she’s been calling Jesus lately) Psalty is still rocking our world all these years later!

Sometimes I get so freaked out about things my Father has already told me He’s going to take care of. What if I took even a fraction of the time I spend worrying and used it to just think about how much I have in Christ? Paul said that even if I sometimes feel like I have nothing, I still possess everything! I want the faith and heart of that four-year-old girl who lets her Daddy worry about provision and just spends her time thinking about her favorite boy.