The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty (Proverbs 21:5).

When "Obi-Two Subaru" broke down, just months after my 16th birthday, I knew that I needed to get busy.  A 16-year-old in the United States of America views a driver's license not as an extra-special privilege, but as one of those unalienable human rights as sketched out in the Declaration of Independence.  And then, of course, what good is a driver's license without a car?!?  I was blessed with a couple of months of pure grace -- granted the honor of driving the decrepit family station wagon through its final months of driveability.  But when the old Subaru breathed its last breath, I was suddenly forced to develop some kind of back-up plan.  My parents were too poor and/or too wise to automatically grant a replacement.  So I took that step into the "real world" and picked up a part-time job working at Meijer, a gigantic supermarket / department store (Dutch readers will have to think of this in terms of a #1-sized Albert Heijn combined with the biggest Blokker you could ever imagine combined with the largest Hema in the Netherlands).  It was not glamorous or well-paying work -- bagging grociers and collecting shopping carts from the parking lot -- but I could fit my work schedule in around school and football practice and other engagements, and it turned out to be as good a job as any.  Most significantly, by the end of the summer, I had earned enough money to go "halfsies" with my parents on a 1985 Chevrolet Chevette hatchback (Dutch readers, think of something like a Volkswagen Golf) -- and Bam!  I was back on the road with my very own car:  the Cherry Bomb.

This is a classic narrative of the "Protestant work ethic:"  the kind of story that seems almost prerequisite to fatherhood and career development in Western culture.  "That, kids, is the summer that I learned the value of hard work -- where money really comes from."  But as cliche as it might sometimes sound, there really is something to the personal experience that is required to learn the truth of the Proverb:  "The plans of the diligent lead to profit."

If we skip that step -- learning about planning and persevering and profiting from plain old hard work -- then we can be too easily enticed by get-rich-quick schemes, which provide the illusion of financial success and prosperity with a minimum of personal effort.  The fact is that any kind of "opportunity" to earn oodles of money quickly, easily, and automatically turns out badly and actually maintains cycles of poverty and dependence.  There's an old adage that says, "If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is."  Or, to phrase it in more Solomonic terms, "Haste leads to poverty."

I really do value the experiences that I gained bagging groceries at Meijer, mucking out horse stables at Crossroads Ranch, delivering pizzas (in the beloved Cherry Bomb!), restoring massive Victorian mansions with Florida Bob... because they helped me to understand exactly how the financial systems of the world work.  The engines of the world economy are driven by diligence and deliberate, applied effort.  "The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty."  And the sooner we can learn this, the happier and healthier we will be.