We Are All Millionaires

I was an emotional wreck last night.

I watched the show, "The Secret Millionaire".

If you have never seen this show before, I strongly encourage you to. Just make sure you have a box of Puffs next to you (hey...I work for P&G. I can't refer to them as kleenex). I had not ever seen it before and I was completely unprepared for the flood of raw emotion.

Here's the premise: A multi-millionaire goes under-cover in an extremely impoverished area of the country and lives with the poor and destitute for a week. They identify those in greatest need, and at the end of the week, they get out their own checkbooks and give away at least $100,000 to those they feel are most in need of financial assistance.

I was blown away by the concept and had to watch to see how "real" it was going to be.

Let me give you a bit of background about me. About seven years ago, I went to Africa for the first time in my life (Swaziland). It's the second smallest country in Africa and has the highest AIDS rate in the world. At the time, nearly 1 in 2 people in the country was infected. I saw entire families made-up of only children because the parents had died off. There was virtually no one my age in the country - just the very young and the very old. Extreme poverty, poor living conditions, and malnutrition. Then I came home (after a week) to what I can only describe as "gross over-abundance". The excess we have in this country is disgusting, gross, and shameful. I'm as guilty as you. That experience, and another one two years later, changed my life and how I see "stuff" - material possessions. So since then, every year at Christmas time, I am so frustrated by the societal expectation to get "stuff" I don't need and to give "stuff" that others don't need. Ask my family - they keep asking me what I want for Christmas and I keep telling them, "Nothing. I have all I need and more".

So this millionaire lives a week in one of the poorest areas of Pennsylvania, in a roach-infested apartment with little heat that costs $47/week for rent. And all she has is $107 to live off of - welfare wages. After a week, she identifies, 1) a woman who cares for approximately 15 under-privileged kids by herself, including a number of foster kids, and wishes she could help more, 2) a widowed mom of three young boys who lives in a broken-down house and is barely making it, but being a pillar for her boys; her husband died unexpectedly about 6 months previously from a heart attack, and 3) a woman who buys groceries and delivers boxes of food to the doorsteps of poor families every week because she sees the need. At the end of the week, the child-care woman gets a check for $30,000 and a truck-load of toys for the kids, the young widow gets a check for $70,000, and the woman feeding the poor gets $100,000 - all from a stranger from a fortunate life.

I was watching the show with my oldest son, Gavin, and during one of the commercials he turned to me and said he felt guilty. Here he is watching these very poor people and then the next second he is watching commercials for buying sweaters and watches and cars and phones. He made me proud in that moment. He got it. I agreed with him and told him I felt guilty for watching the show on my flat-screen TV.

You see...if you are reading this, you are rich. We all are. We are all millionaires. We all have more than we need and we still buy more. And what are we doing to help the people down the road, or in the next town who are barely making it. Do we see them? Do we think about them?

Rob Bell says, "It's easy for us to fall into a mindset of viewing "our" world as "the" world, because it's all we generally see. We're constantly bombarded with images of the latest styles and models of everything, and it can easily leave us feeling like what we have isn't enough because we see people that have even more than us. But how does what we have compare to what most people in the world have? Maybe what we have is enough; maybe it's more than enough. Maybe God has blessed us with everything we have so we can bless and give to others."

This Christmas, I want to give away more than I receive. And I don't mean sweaters or video games or MP3 players. I want to give away food to the hungry, blankets to the cold, water to the thirsty, and companionship to the lonely. Because I'm rich.