We found ourselves in the lobby of the Hotel Petaluma, after a long and emotional day. The hotel bar didn’t have any single malt whiskey, so I contented myself with a glass of Johnnie Walker Black Label; my wife chose a bottle of sparkling water. Eighteen months ago we had celebrated my father-in-law’s 95th birthday. There was a party in the hotel, with family and friends gathered from far and wide. I wrote about it in my book Blessed by God, describing the arrival of my father-in-law and his wife, who were welcomed by a family “bound together by love.” 

The following year my father-in-law passed away. Less than six months later the family suffered a second bereavement, when my brother-in-law died after a long illness. Last week my wife and I traveled again to California to join the family as it gathered to remember and give thanks. The love which bound us together on that first occasion was now at work again to bind us in our grief, to heal and sustain us through the gift of one another. Over the next two days there would be many opportunities for care and connection.

On that first evening, after the family gathering, we sipped our drinks and relaxed in the open space of the hotel lobby. Three strangers entered the lobby and we beckoned them to join us. We got to talking with one of them, a thick set man in his fifties. He asked us where we were from and we told him. I said, pointing to his hat, “You’re from LA?” His white baseball cap had the letters LA in black. 

“No, I’m not from LA,” he responded. “My housekeeper puts a hat out each morning and that’s the one I’m wearing today.” The man said his name was Jay and that he used to play in the National Football League (NFL). During the course of the conversation we learned that he had $25 million in the bank. 

He told us that he could have settled for a life of ease and self care, but instead chose a different path. He remembered that, when he started in the NFL, he didn’t know the financial side of the business. Fortunately, he knew an older, wiser man who instilled in him the need for prudence. The older man taught Jay that just because you have money, it doesn’t follow that you should spend it all. After leaving the game, Jay decided to become a mentor to new players, teaching them financial management. 

He remarked on how most teams focus on training and winning games, while leaving players to figure out for themselves the money side of things. In the world of NFL, many of them become rich beyond their wildest dreams but have no experience of wealth management. Jay stepped into that gap, and now spends time with the players, teaching them how to be smart off the field as well as on it.

What Jay had understood is that money and the easy life it brings are temptations. What makes us truly rich is not how much we have in the bank, but what we can do for someone else. Another way of looking at this is to ask, “what will you do with all the blessings of life?” You could count them all, and give thanks, but that would not be enough. The answer is to pay it forward. “Freely you have received; freely give.” (Matthew 10:8). When Jay saw the young players coming into the game, he saw himself as he once was, and decided he needed to offer something back.

How can you “pay it forward” in your own life?

Father David