I am intrigued by the phrase “spiritual millionaire.” The phrase jumped off the page at me as I was re-reading the autobiography of one of the great spiritual leaders of the 20th century, Thomas Merton, called The Seven Story Mountain. In the opening pages of the story of his life he reflects on the rich childhood he shared with his artistic bohemian parents. He says that “if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and investigate every experience and then talk about it,” he would have been a “spiritual millionaire” from the cradle through his adult life.
Which got me to thinking about what it would take for you and me to become spiritual millionaires.

What do you think? If becoming a spiritual millionaire was the goal, how would we spend our time, our money, our energy? What activities might we add? Delete? Sometimes my husband and I have an extended conversation about what we will do if we won the lottery. It takes a while to decide how you would spend $746 million. We get rather serious about exactly where to invest the money. And then we stop to remember that we never bought a ticket! Some folks day dream about early retirement but never put extra money into their retirement funds. I wonder if many of us are similar in our efforts towards the spiritual riches. We’d like to be spiritual millionaires, but do not get around to investing ourselves in that goal.

Of course the good news of the gospel is that spiritual riches cannot be sought or found but always come as a gift. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Which is a reminder that sometimes God comes to us when we seem to be the least well off. Most mornings I watch out my office window as a dad walks his 2-year-old to preschool. The little boy stops to examine the rocks in the garden while the father patiently gets down on his knees to look with his son at the marvel of a round grey stone. Or the boy stomps his tennis shoes gently through the puddle of rain while the father smiles with delight. And I remember that when Jesus was asked who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he called a child and put the child among them and said “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18).”