Our international economy is in such a disarray at this time. There has been a loss of jobs, businesses and products. Along with such losses, governments do not know how to fix the issues following a world pandemic. It’s easy to be an armchair critic, but what precedent do they/we have to follow?

Steve Forbes has said, “Money is not wealth, but it helps create wealth.” The U.S. government responded by creating several stimulus packages to help businesses, nonprofits and individuals. Most are happy that happened. It’s something called, “Quantitative Easing.”

It is said if you or I print money, it’s counterfeiting and counterfeiting is a form of theft. But if the government prints money, it’s generating stimulus or quantitative easing in the case of the Cares Act. It’s a short-term solution for a long-term problem.

Dirt or gold?

Andrew Carnegie came to America as a child from Scotland. He worked small, odd jobs as a boy but we know him as the largest manufacturer of steel in the United States. It is said that at one time he had forty-three millionaires working for him. (In today’s terms that million dollars would be comparable to twenty million.)

One day a reporter asked him how these men became so valuable in order to pay them so much money? This was Carnegie’s reply, “…the men are developed the same way gold is mined. When gold is mined, several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold; but one doesn’t go into the mine looking for dirt—one goes in looking for gold.”

Have you made a decision as to how you will come out of this season? For many it feels like someone has been piling on dirt. But there is gold in that dirt. Can a stimulus generate more rather than just being received and cashed? How can we mine gold and generate more from the losses we have experienced? If we sit around and just complain about all the dirt, we’ll never find the gold.

Bark or gold?

I know a story of a logging yard near my home that was losing money and threatening to shut down its business. A Christian business man was consulted and upon arriving on site he couldn’t help but notice mountains of bark, unused and unwanted bark removed from the logs. This man told them there must be something they can do with that bark. Out of those mountains of unwanted bark came gold. We know it today as bark mulch. Logging has not been their business for decades now, but rather bark mulch.

Let’s ask God for new and creative ideas to generate income, business, support for our local church, mission dollars and the like. Perhaps God in His wisdom placed gold in the dirt so we have to become creative in discovering it.