KneEmail - a devotional by Mike Benson associated with Forthright Magazine
Jackpot
WHO HASN'T DREAMED of hitting the jackpot and buying a new car and taking the vacation of a lifetime...?
Not all that long ago, Nevada was the only place you could legally play the slots or poker, and New Hampshire had the only legal lottery.
By 1999, thirty-seven states had lotteries, and gambling was legal in some form in all but three states (Utah, Tennessee, and Hawaii). Collectively, we Americans now spend more on gambling then we do on movies. Gross revenues for gambling exceeded fifty billion dollars just nine years ago.
However, the cost to society is even greater. A University of Illinois study found that the social and criminal cost to states is three times as high as the profits gained from gambling. Between fifteen and twenty million of us are now in danger of becoming problem gamblers. (Brad Knickerbocker)
KneEmail: "Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need" ( Eph. 4:28).