The Black Market

How big is the Black Market for school supplies? I can’t imagine anyone stealing school supplies – pencils, notebooks, spirals, erasers, etc. The supplies are practically free anyway (have you checked Staples lately – we bought spirals for .06 cents and pencils for .02 cents each). And if you are really poor – they are free. Almost every City, and multitudes of fraternal organizations I know about, hand out free school supplies, along with backpacks and such, at the beginning of each school year.

Police in Maine are looking for a man who made off with pencils, notebooks, crayons and other school supplies that were meant to fill backpacks to be given to low-income students before the start of school. (Associated Press)

Maybe this guy is going to hawk them at the local Community College, or perhaps he runs a “private” school and wants to have a ready supply for his poor students. Better yet, perhaps he is going to donate them to the very people he stole them from thereby gaining notoriety as a philanthropist.

Tragically, I do know people who steal money from God. I understand we don’t call it that, and most people don’t know – or pretend they don’t know – that they owe God a portion of their livelihood. It was Jesus who said – “Give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21) He must have meant that we owed a financial response to God just as we owe a financial response to Government.

Unfortunately, whether one is pilfering pencils from kids, or financial resources from God, it’s stealing – and that’s against the law – both man’s and God’s.