Category: Biblical History

The Truth
About Gumballs
for the young and young at heart.

Sit down, young folks, and I’ll tell you a story of long ago. 
 
There was a time when I, too, was young, and we used money you could hold, put in your pocket, and drop into vending machines. Ladies carried coin purses especially for coins. Coins were collected carefully, sorted, and counted because we would save them up to buy something, maybe a comic book or a pint of ice cream. In emergencies, we’d use those coins for lunch money, a little embarrassed if we didn’t have two quarters to hand the cashier. Everyone knew if you paid with dimes, nickels, and pennies, your parents had come up short.
 
Coins could also be used as toys. You could play something like a cross between table hockey and marbles (look up how to play marbles) with coins, and I liked setting up basketball and football plays with them the way coaches use whiteboards now. Boys sometimes played quarters, but I couldn’t afford to lose mine, so I didn’t play that game.
 
One of the great things about coins was that back then, people paid for things with money, and they received change in coins. Dad would empty his pockets of change coins into an old ashtray at the end of the day along with bits of red, blue, and white electrical wire, leftover screws, plastic wire nuts, and guitar picks. What I aimed for, though, was making sure those pockets were emptied before we made it back home.
 
While Dad paid the cashier at a restaurant, I’d inspect the area around the cashier for gumball machines. There was usually at least one. I always checked the dispenser because sometimes a good Samaritan would leave a piece of gum, or if you turned the lever, a stuck piece might drop out. The timing was important, though. Just as the cashier would hand Dad his change, hopefully with lots of coins, I’d dash in and beam my most angelic smile.
 
I could usually score at least enough coins for one gumball, and on a good day, two. If he was short on dollar bills, then my gumballs would be forfeited for the tip. Dad always tipped. Everyone should. Even if you can’t buy a gumball. Here’s why.
 
There’s a passage in Scripture that teaches about gumballs. Don’t believe me? Listen closely:
 
• “Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.” (Dt 8:11-18)
 
God is explaining to the Israelites that the gumball machine doesn’t work like they think it does. At first, they were in the wilderness. The Father gave them manna every morning; all they had to do was pick it up. It was like the gumballs just started rolling out of the machine all by themselves.
 
When they enter the Land of Israel, though, they will have to do something their parents’ generation never had to do: sow, cultivate, reap, and thresh to make the produce they’d eat. The extent of the wilderness food effort was their gathering manna that miraculously appeared each morning except Shabbat. God let them be a only little hungry in the wilderness to test them. He didn’t starve them, just let them get a little hungry.
 
Being a little hungry is not a horrible thing, but it was their test to see if their hunger would make them angry with God for not making everything completely comfortable. When we don’t get what we want when we want, often we become angry with other people, which is a sign we’re angry with God. We think we deserve better. We think if God made us, He should treat us better. That’s a test probably everyone but Yeshua has failed at one time or another.
 
When the Israelites entered the Promised Land, they would be blessed to work and accumulate their own wealth. The danger was that they might be deceived into thinking their wealth was a result of their own efforts. They might think they put the coins in the machine, exerted the effort, and therefore, gumballs would fall freely because they turned the lever. They could become pretty proud of themselves for making so much money by planting and harvesting crops. 
 
But the Heavenly Father is not a gumball machine, and the Land of Israel doesn’t just produce crops because Israelites plant, cultivate, and harvest.
 
When I was really young, I never thought about how the gumballs got into the machine or who put the machine there. I only knew that if a coin went in, and I turned the lever, gum would roll out. The coin and I were all that really mattered. When I grew a little older, I realized that someone put the machine there to make money, usually for some charity listed on a sticker, and someone came and refilled the machine even though I never saw it happening. 
 
If what I didn’t see didn’t happen first, then what I saw and did couldn’t happen later. 
 
The gumball machine owner supplied gum for me to buy, but it also provided the profit to the needy. If I’d known that earlier, I’d have pressed a lot harder for extra coins to buy more gumballs to “help the needy.” 
 
And there’s the problem in our fallen human nature. We’re greedy. Would as many people just drop coins in a charity box as they did the gumball machine? 
 
I think many would. And Israelites should.
 
On Erev Shabbat, we have a chance to do that, to drop coins in a charity box without receiving anything, gumballs included, in return. It’s called a tzedekah box. Before lighting the Shabbat candles, we drop some money in a tzedekah box, and when the container is full, the money is given to a worthy cause.
 
Israelites should be willing to give because the Heavenly Father gave to them first, and they want to share with others. They know they didn’t earn the money alone. The Heavenly Father released that money with His own hand in an unseen action. If that unseen action didn’t take place, then we wouldn’t have the ability to earn it. 
 
To understand it takes something called faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.” (He 11:1) Do we literally see the Father release our income? No, we can’t. It happens in a spiritual realm, which is something very difficult for our eyes to see and our mind to believe. And yet, it’s the truth!
 
Not one seed would grow if the Word was not releasing it to do so. The Father watches His special creations, human beings, and must shake His head when they believe they earned their money without Him. Just because a gumball fell out of the machine after we worked to get the coin, put it in the machine, and turned the lever, that doesn’t mean we alone made the gumball appear. An Israelite must be different from other people who don’t know or believe that.
 
The Heavenly Father opens a window in Heaven, which gives us the power to earn money and profit from our labors. It’s a mistake to think that we alone are responsible for how much or how little we have. Something happens first that we don’t see, and that allows us to do our work and earn. 
 
We, in turn, have the power to give some of that wealth to others. If we believe that something happened first: the Heavenly Father created everything, including us, and He supplies seeds, sun, and rain to make things grow, and then He opens an unseen door to release the increase when we work, then we understand the truth of the gumball machine. We have no reason to be stingy with others because the Father has not been stingy with us. He said we should remember this because it is part of our Covenant with Him. An agreement.
 
In this case, our agreement is that no matter how much it seems only our efforts produced our coins, we’ll believe the Father first made us able to do so. That truth of our faith will trigger us to in turn do what is in our ability to bless others. Instead of saying, “The work of my hand got me this, so it’s mine to keep,” we’ll share a generous portion with the needy because the Father’s hand was in it. We’re in a real partnership with Him, not just standing there waiting with our empty baskets in the wilderness every morning.
 
This is how we lend that money to the Father until He decides to open up Heaven a little more for the needy person:
 
• “One who is gracious to a poor man lends to the LORD, and He will repay him for his good deed.” (Pr 19:17)
 
But just like the faith that sees the unseen, releasing the power to work and make money, that same faith sees that the repayment, or at least most of it, the Father holds in our heavenly bank accounts for us to have in eternity. Imagine that…a loan that will be repaid to us forever. Gumballs rolling through infinity.
 
“Faith was never meant to replace action. It was meant to guide it.” – Juda Honickman