Nigeria wants me to be rich.

Yesterday, someone named "Dilly Mark" sent me an email about some money he wanted to give me. I know what you're thinking, with a name like Dilly Mark it had to be legit. Here is what he said:

Good Day, I greet you in the name of GOD, the Beneficent, the Merciful. I urge you to treat it serious. We want to transfer to overseas account $17,800.000.00US from a Bank here in Nigeria West African. I want to ask you, If you are not capable to quietly look for a reliable and honest person who will be capable and fit to provide either an existing bank account or to set up a new Bank a/c immediately to receive this money, even an empty a/c can serve to receive this money, as long as you will remain honest to me till the end for this important business trusting in you and believing in God that you will never let me down either now or in future.

There are a couple of things I like about this email. First of all, that he's using God as a way to scam people. He calls him the beneficent and the merciful. And then he throws it back on me, that at the end of the day I might be the one that doesn't remain honest. Dilly has some doubts, and they're about me.

Ultimately the thing that kills me about this email is that I think it's one more example of a rule we all believe: If something is too good to be true, it is.

There is no 17 million for me. That super attractive girl that wants to be your friend on myspace is actually just a porn site doing some tricky advertising. There is no such thing as a free lunch. But have you ever thought about that idea in the context of God?

I think part of the reason we have such a hard time getting close to God is that by his very nature, He's good. Dilly's right, he's merciful. But not in a way we can even comprehend. We almost have to create new categories of the word "good" to understand how he operates.

One of my favorite verses about this is Isaiah 30:18. Here is what it says;

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.

I've mentioned that verse in other posts because it blows me away. I don't know that I really understand what it means to "long." I've desired or wanted or needed, but long? There's such a deep sense of purpose in that word and the object of that longing for God? To be gracious, to you. And if that wasn't a clear enough description of his purpose in life, we're told that he rises to show us compassion.

When God rolls out of his hammock, pretty sure God isn't rocking the waterbed, he's got one thing on his mind, showing you compassion.

And last but not least, I love the period on the end of the sentence. Honestly, we need to collectively say words of praise about the Bible's punctuation. There's no colon in that thought, it doesn't read "show you compassion, if you don't sin and always do your quiet time."

It's a complete thought and that completely makes me feel richer than Nigeria could ever make me.