This is from Dennis Rainey of Family Life. I signed up for his emails.
Not long after I graduated from the University of Arkansas, a female friend came to me for counsel. She was dating a young man who happened to be my best friend. And though she wanted to marry him, he was uncertain about committing to her.
I had doubts, too, about whether they should marry. So I told her a parable I had recently heard, about a boy who’d been playing in his front yard when his uncle stopped by to visit. After talking for a bit, the man sprung a philosophical question on his five-year-old nephew: “If I gave you the choice, would you like a dime today or a dollar next week?”
The boy stood and thought. A dollar could buy him that rubber ball he’d seen at the corner store, but a “dime today” could mean a package of potato chips for his hungry late-afternoon stomach. So he took the dime, bought his snack and went home happy.
But about a week later, a buddy passed his house bouncing a new rubber ball. The boy then thought about his uncle’s offer. The chips were a distant memory, along with the dime that had seemed so valuable at the moment. If only he’d been willing to wait for that rubber ball later on.
There’s a lot of truth to that story, you know. Sometimes we’re so glamorized by the glint and gleam of the one thing we want right now that we’re not willing to wait and trust God for the something better He planned for us down the line.
I should know. Because just over a year later, this female friend of mine decided to marry someone else–my best friend’s best friend. Me. And even though there’s been a lot of inflation since then, Barbara says she got her dollar!