Last week David Gonzales had a chance at more than $2 million. He ended up with $127,000, still a good amount but almost 90% short of what he could have had. It all came down to greed. Gonzales wasn’t a Powerball winner walking away with a ticket from his local 7-Eleven store. Gonzales was renovating an old house in a small Minnesota community and removing some insulation. Approximately 70+ years ago the owner had stuffed newspapers into the ceiling, along with an assortment of whatever printed matter was available. While pulling out the paper, Gonzales spotted a First Edition Superman comic book from 1938. Thinking it might have some value he did a little research and found a similar comic book had recently fetched $2.16 million.
But before Gonzales could get his comic to auction, he and a relative argued over its value and how to split the money. During the “discussion,” the comic got ripped. The “funny book,” as we called them when I was a kid, had survived decades unharmed in that ceiling, but one greed-driven dispute rendered the back cover torn. The result was a high bid of only $127,000, not the millions Gonzales expected. There has been no word as to whether the greedy men made up or whether this ended their familial friendship.
Proverbs 15:27 declares, “He who is greedy for gain troubles his own house.” In this case, the house of Gonzales was not only troubled, but effectively had a windfall stolen. Through the years I’ve heard many horror stories of families torn asunder by the reading of a will or the appointment of a certain executor of an estate. Everything in the family seemed fine until grandma was dead and it came time to count the financial leftovers. “The love of money is the root of all evil,” 1 Timothy 6:10 warns. As the Gonzales family looks back on their comic book misadventure, things now might not seem so comical.
