It started out with me musing about teaching even young children about budgeting and maybe trade-offs.

Imagine a young mother sitting at a table doing some budgeting by a woodstove.  The clear sunlight of winter streams in through the window.  She’s doing it partly in paper and pencil so her children can see and experience her doing it.  Having them learn about budgeting is important to her.

She gets an idea.

She calls over her little girl.  The child is maybe 3 to 4, maybe even 5.  The mother takes out some wooden blocks of different colors and labels them, including maybe with little drawings.  She uses some long plain blocks to create a square.

“Here,” she said, “let’s play the the Big Person Game.”  The kid is excited.  The mother explains that the square is the money they have to spend each month, the blocks have to fit inside it.  Any blocks that cannot fit they cannot use.  Fitting blocks is something the child does, so she understands.  Then the mother lays down some blocks.  “Here’s paying for the house, here’s a block for the lights and the electricity, here’s a block for the car, here’s the basic food we need, here’s some clothes.”  Then, as the mother designed, she shows the child there is a little space left and shows the child some blocks that could fit into it.  Ice cream, maybe.  Toys.  A trip to the ocean.  Small things that are discretionary where letting the child have some say can do no harm and possibly good.

The thing is, the child doesn’t want to choose.  She pouts that the blocks won’t all fit in.  “Why can’t we have more money?” the little girl says.  “I want it all.”  The mom thinks about this.  “OK,” she says.  “But to get more money, daddy has to work more.”  Mom expands the size of the square but she fills the extra space with a block that says Daddy Plays With Me.  “If you want to fit in everything else,”  Mom says, “you will have to remove the block for daddy playing with you.”

The little girl isn’t having it.  No.  She is not going to choose.  She then brightens.  “I will pray,” she announces, “to get more money.”

The mother laughs with delight.  The Big Person Game isn’t going the way she expected, but this iss wonderful.  She widens the square and put out a block she says is prayer, but she says that for that block to work they also need to add a block called family scripture study and a block called listening to Daddy and Mommy.

That is the conclusion of the Big Person Game.

Then my mind fell into a reverie.

God was playing with Little Soul somewhere in the clouds of heaven.

“How about a game?”  he said.  “You’ll like it.  It’s called the Big Person Game.”

Little Soul was interested.

God and Little Soul sat down on the floor of heaven and God got out the set.  It consisted of thousands lovely colored blocks.  There was a square wooden ring laid down on the floor.  The challenge of the game was that Little Soul had to stack up blocks in the square, but only the ones that fit, like a Big Person.  God said the square was called mortality.  He put some blocks down for Little Soul, like one called a happy childhood.  Then Little Soul went to work while God made suggestions and pointed out blocks that Little Soul had missed and sometimes handed blocks to Little Soul that Little Soul asked for.  Little Soul’s tongue was out.  Little Soul was concentrating hard.  Little Soul put down blocks for education and marriage and so on.  Little Soul put down a block called prayer which was a nice steady block that allowed other things to stack up on top of it.  But Little Soul discovered it needed some other blocks called scriptures and church and service to steady it in turn.   Those blocks together made for a sturdier base that allowed more blocks to be piled on, lovely blocks, and better yet it turned out that they had some irregular contours on their tops on which some perfectly lovely blocks fitted so well.  There was one block that was just so achingly lovely that Little Soul just had to fit it in somehow.  It was called nobility.  But Little Soul couldn’t make it fit no matter how much Little Soul tried without a unattractive block called adversity.  However, once stacked, the contrast between the colors of the two and the way they fit together was quite nice.

Finally the blocks were stacked up quite high, almost as high as Little Soul.  Little Soul looked at it dubiously.  It was ramshackle.  It was sort of a tower.  But also it was sort of not a tower.  “I don’t think I am very good at the Big Person Game,” Little Soul said.  God smiled.  “It is beautiful because it is yours, ” he said.

“I will give you something to add to your Big Person Game,” He said.  God took out a dropper and dropped a golden liquid drop on top of the blocks.  It ran down over all the blocks and everywhere it touched the blocks turned to brilliant gold.

The name of the liquid was Gratitude.