Zeros Galore!

With the Mega Millions estimated annuitized jackpot prize at $970,000,000 (zeros) and Powerball at $430,000,000 (zeros!), it is more than tempting to blow a few dozen bucks on tickets. Even knowing the cash values are a mere $548,000,000 (ZEROS!!) and $248,000,000 (SO MANY ZEROS!!!!) respectively, it's hard not to think of everything I could accomplish with all those zeros. Never have to work another day in my life. Get out of debt. Buy a house. Buy a house on an island. Buy an island. Try a different hobby every day for the rest of my life. I'd really like to get into sailing the world, but why stop there? I bet the Sea of Tranquility is lovely this time of year. I think of all these things fondly, with the subconscious belief that these things, and ultimately money itself, are a worthy goal unto themselves and will bring me fulfillment.

It is a big burden having to plan your steps in life with the practicalities of finances in mind, especially when you have a huge amount of debt. Add to that the nagging preconceived notion that you're sub-par and are destined to eke out an existence taking the crappy positions no one else wants, and it's hard to be optimistic about the future. But there's hope. In Psalm 50, God said he owns the cattle on a thousand hills.* While this was not said in the context of him being able to provide for our needs, it does highlight the fact that God is not wanting for anything. More to the point, in Luke 12 and Matthew 6, Jesus says we shouldn't focus on or worry about our physical needs. Instead, we should be focused on God's will. Wanting to win millions upon millions of dollars goes well beyond the desire to get out of debt and have financial stability. It gets into the realm of wanting to dictate the course of my life and be the master of my world.

Two guiding questions came to mind: Are my desires for my life in line with what God wants with my life? Do I trust him to provide the resources to accomplish these plans? If I can honestly answer "yes" to both of these, suddenly the lotto jackpots don't matter anymore. Even with all those zeros.



* This surely meant something to the ancient Israelites to whom this was initially said, but to help put this concept in terms we can understand today, I made some assumptions, did some measurements of the hills around Jerusalem on Google Maps, spent way more time researching cows than I thought I would have to, then ran some numbers. Estimating the average hill in Israel is at least a square mile, each hill would have 640 acres or more of grazing land. A thousand hills would thus provide 640,000 acres of grazing land. The USDA recommends 1.8 acres per cow (https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb1097070.pdf). For simplicity, I assumed modern US cows and ancient Israeli cows would have similar grazing area needs. This would put God's herd on a thousand hills at 355,555 head of cattle. The average US cow at slaughter prior to the advent of intensive selective breeding in the 1970s and later widespread use of growth hormones in the 1980s was 1,047 pounds (https://www.beefmagazine.com/genetics/0201-increased-beef-cows, https://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/safetyhealth/productsafetyinformation/ucm055435.htm), which I'll use as an estimate of the average ancient Israeli cow. The current price of a bovine is about $111/cwt (http://www.agcenter.com/newcattlereport.aspx, https://beef.unl.edu/faq-2009beefprices). This translates to our average 1,047 pound cow being worth $1,162.17. We modern day folks could therefore think of God as saying he has $413,215,354.35. Kind of anti-climactic that this ended up being less than the current jackpot amounts, yet if we focus on the big picture, God created everything on which the value of money is based, which makes the concept of assigning value to cows or money rather silly and leaves God alone as having worth.