In 1934 America was in a depression that many of you lived through first hand. The stock market had crashed in 1929 and millions of workers were jobless. Creativity took over as industrious citizens tried to find ways to feed themselves and their families.
There was a rather creative fellow from a small city in Pennsylvania named Charles Darrow. Not a household name, but we’ve all heard of his work. He took a board game to the executives at Parker Brothers, a company almost driven out of business because of the Great Depression. Darrow worked hard and was most proud of what he had accomplished, but Parker Brothers rejected it because of 52 design errors.
Unwilling to give up, Charles Darrow, with the help of a printer friend, produced 5,000 handmade sets and sold them to a Philadelphia department store, where it became an overnight sensation. In 1935, Parker Brothers came to its senses and began producing the game. Since then, an estimated 500 million people around the world have played this most famous of board games.
How fitting that a game about living the high life as a successful financier was introduced at a time when the country was trying to rebound from its worst ever economic depression. Even with their very real financial struggles, people somehow found the two dollars to get in on the newest craze.
Parker Brothers went into around the clock production and sold 20,000 games per week. People probably thought, “If I can’t have money and property in real life, at least I can pretend by playing Monopoly.”
More than 200 million games have been sold
More than five billion little green houses have been produced
A game with solid gold houses and pure silver hotels once sold for $25,000
The longest game in history lasted 70 days
The total amount of Monopoly money in a set is $15,140
So how much does it take to satisfy our heart’s desire? I have just received David Jeremiah’s new book called “Signs of Life.” In it he writes that back in 1987, a poll was taken by the Chicago Tribune. It revealed that people who earned less than $30,000 a year said that $50,000 would make them happy. However, people who earned $100,000 a year said they would need $250,000 to be completely satisfied. Psychologists call this the “escalation of expectations.” If people work to attain a certain level of prosperity, thinking they will be happy when they reach it, they quickly become accustomed to their prosperity, grow discontent, and start striving for the next level.
Church growth and mission experts have found this same phenomenon occurring. Within three generations of the acceptance of the Gospel by a primitive culture, which resulted in increased wealth and higher standards of living, people start losing interest in the very spiritual truths that pulled them out of poverty. A little bit of money creates a longing for more. And that’s true even for those with a lot of money. At a time when John D. Rockefeller was the world’s richest man, he was asked, “How much is enough?” His reply….”Just a little bit more.”
So how much is enough? In John Ortberg’s new book entitled “When The Game Is Over It All Goes Back In The Box” he writes about a man whose name became synonymous with the hunger for more. He wanted more wealth, so he built one of the greatest financial empires of his day. He wanted more pleasure, so he seduced or paid for the most glamorous women money could buy. He wanted more adventure, so he set airspeed records and designed, built and piloted the world’s most unique aircraft. He wanted more power, so he acquired political clout that was the envy of Senators. He wanted more glamour, so he crashed Hollywood, owned studios, courted stars.
And sadly, here’s how this man’s life ended. He was a figure of gothic horror, ready for the grave. He was emaciated, only 120 pounds on his six foot four frame. A thin scraggly beard reached midway onto his sunken chest. Many of his teeth were black, his fingernails too long and curved, and his arms were full of innumerable needle marks. Howard Hughes was an addict. A billionaire junkie. Here’s the question? If Howard Hughes had pulled off one more deal, made one more million, would it have been enough?
How much stuff do we need to make us happy? I read that there are now more than 30,000 self-storage facilities in the country offering over a billion square feet for people to store their stuff. In the 1960’s, this industry did not exist. We now spend $12 billion a year just to pay someone to store our extra stuff. It’s larger than the music industry.
In His Sermon on the plain to the people on the mount, Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)
One more story, now one of my favorites. We can make a difference no matter who we are or what we do. It’s the story of Johnny the bagger. Johnny works at a grocery store. One day he went to a training event led by a speaker named Barbara Glanz. She was talking to three thousand frontline workers for a supermarket chain – truck drivers, cashiers, and stockers.
Barbara was speaking on how people can make a difference. She described how every interaction with another person is a chance to create a memory, to bless someone’s life.
Think about your own life, even this past week. An interaction with a person, a memory made, a blessing from God.
Barbara talked about how important it is for us to look for these moments. At the end of the training session, she wrote her cell phone number on the board and invited people at the conference to give her a call if they wanted to talk more about something she said.
About a month later, Barbara received a call from one of the people at that session, a nineteen year old bagger named Johnny. Johnny proudly informed her that he had Down syndrome, and then he told her his story.
“Barbara, I liked what you talked about, but I didn’t think I could do anything special for our customers. After all, I’m just a bagger.” Then he had an idea. He decided that every night when he came home from work, he would find a “thought for the day” for his next shift. It would be something positive, some reminder of how good it was to be alive, or how much people matter, or how many gifts we are surrounded by. If he couldn’t find one, he would make one up.
Every night his Dad would help him enter the saying six times on a page on the computer. Then Johnny would print fifty pages. He would take out a pair of scissors and carefully cut 300 copies and sign every one. Johnny put the stack of pages next to him while he worked. Each time he finished bagging someone’s groceries, he would put his saying on the top of the last bag. Then he would stop what he was doing, look the person straight in the eye and say, “I’ve put a great saying in your bag, I hope it helps you have a good day. Thanks for coming here.”
A month later the store manager called Barbara. “Barbara, you won’t believe what is happening here. I was making my rounds, and when I got up to the cashiers, the line at Johnny’s checkout was three times longer than anyone else’s. It went all the way down the frozen food isle.
The manager got on the loudspeaker to open more checkout lines, but he couldn’t get any of the customers to move. They said, “That’s OK. We’ll wait. We want to be in Johnny’s line.” One woman came up to him, grabbed his hand and said, “I used to shop at your store once a week. Now I come in every time I go by – I want to get Johnny’s thought for the day.”
You see Johnny is doing more than filling bags with groceries; he is filling lives with hope.
So what are the desires of your heart? The true desires? Holding fast to those things that never age? The love and yearning for a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The love and yearning for a relationship with those around us. The most important desires. To love God and to love our neighbors. Interesting that Jesus said the same thing when he talked about the greatest commandment of all.
