ACCOUNTING 101, Grade: NP (Not Passing)

I was teaching English in Japan at the time, but it could have been anywhere, really. It was the days before email, so my mother sent me a hurried letter: “Sweetheart, the bank called, and three of your checks bounced, so I’ve put an extra hundred in your account to cover the cost of the bounced checks and anything else you may have written. Please check your math!”

I never did find the error, which was lost somewhere in decimal points and accuracy, a quality of mine that is quite lacking. My husband sometimes complains that I exaggerate to make a story better. Well, I guess I had exaggerated in my accounting, and thought I had quite a bit more money in my account than was, in actual fact, there. Too bad.

Fortunately, living in Japan meant I rarely needed checks, and since my mother had covered my tracks, I was fine for the present. I arrived back home eventually with my messy checkbook in hand, and immediately hit upon the perfect solution. Open a new checking account, and let the old one die a natural death. Fortunately, the bank had some kind of system whereby a certain amount of savings meant no-fee checking (which gives you an idea of how long ago this took place), so I could let that old checking account lie fallow for a year. A year later, I decided that all checks would have been cashed, and so I went to the bank and closed the account, believing that their math had to be better than mine, and so whatever they said I had in the account would suffice.

Meanwhile, admitting this rash act to my appalled husband shortly after saying “I do,” resulted in one of the single best decisions of our married life. He would manage all the money. 25 years later, still banking in two countries and now filling out FAFSA, that system still works great for me. I’m not much of a big-time spender, so we have few discussions about money: “We have it.” “We don’t have it,” my husband tells me. I choose to believe him. The alternatives are too chilling.

This morning I was reading an article totally unrelated to banking when I suddenly had the thought: Jesus really is not much of a finance manager, either. I mean, usually, when we think of God, we picture some kind of huge ledger. The things I do for Jesus go on one side of the ledger, and all the things I fail to do, do poorly, or do wrong, go on the other side. It is as though God is some kind of cosmic accountant, working in the mysterious area of monthly bank fees (things like going to church, giving the clothes I hate or am too lazy to mend from my closet to the Goodwill, and reading my Bible or praying for the missionaries) and cancelled checks (being forgiven for losing my cool when my teenage son forgets to empty the dishwasher, grousing about my coworker, or playing Spider Solitaire when I should be praying more for the missionaries).

It hit me this morning that God really isn’t much like my husband, who, every month, pays all the bills, looks up exchange rates and submits insurance forms, and then figures out what the monthly wire from our US checking account needs to be for the next month. Then, after handing me a wad of cash for groceries, he cryptically informs me of how much of the month will be left at the end of the money. No, God is much more like me. He hates math. He’s a terrible accountant, but not because he can’t, but because he chooses to be. When He asked me if I would prefer to let Jesus pay my bills, handle my accounts, and make deposits to handle all my overdrawn failures, He cashed in my old bank account. He ripped it up and said, “No more checks here.” He gave me a fresh start and released me from that world of numbers and decimal points. He handed me a new checkbook, and said, “Write all the checks you want, Lyn. There’s always more money at the end of the month than you can use up.”

I’m released from the anxiety of measuring up, of having to know just what’s in my account, and of keeping track. I haven’t changed from that same 23 year-old that can’t keep accounts balanced. But the good news is: I don’t have to.