The Gift of Work
This past Tuesday, while my wife was at the grocery store with our girls, my 7-year-old daughter saw a bag of lemons and asked if she could have a lemonade stand to help raise money for a puppy that they saw in a pet store. My wife thought it was a good idea, but said that the girls would have to use their own money to purchase the ingredients and do all the work of making the lemonade. Friday night came around and all the plans that we had worked on for the week started into motion. The girls washed, heated, softened, cut and juiced 40 lemons. I thought their little arms were going to fall off!
After that they made the sugar syrup and mixed it all together to make some amazing fresh-squeezed lemonade! We sat down together and figured up how much money we had spent, and divided that by how many glasses of lemonade we could make. Our cost was $.50 per cup (I know, expensive lemons!) I then taught the girls about how to profit from their work and suggested that they sell the lemonade for $1.00 a glass. The next morning we went out to the beach and set up a tent to sell lemonade. In an hour and a half the girls sold every glass that they made and even sold some bottled water as well!
The Gift of Profit
When we got home, we counted up the total sales, added in the tips and there was a whopping $72.00. That blew away any lemonade stand that I ever tried on the sidewalk in front of my house! We took the total and subtracted the $20 that we spent on the ingredients to show the girls that they had $52.00 profit. From there, we split the money between the two of them and then took out 10% for God, 10% for savings and the rest they were allowed to keep.
My children just learned about the wonderful gift of profit! Moms and Dads, you have a great opportunity to teach your children about this, too. It is never too late! Chad Hovind covers this idea in a series called Godonomics. One of God’s gifts to us is the gift of profit. When we profit, it allows us to give, invest and spend. That is how Godonomics works. You produce something, from your production you profit, then you are able to give, invest, and spend. If you have not seen this series yet, you really should. It is an eye-opening look into how God wants an economy to run. Listen to Chad explain it himself.
