Now I will probably never win since I don't play. I have reservations about gambling so I stay away. I also know myself enough to know that if I started playing I might have a tough time stopping and all I would do is lose more money. And finally, as a math teacher, I know the tremendous odds against winning. Your chances are almost zero.
However, I do leave myself a little opening. We had a friend who used to enjoy giving his friends a lottery ticket as a birthday gift. Now I know folks who tore them up and threw them away without checking them out. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I feel that if it is a gift and I've not invested anything of my own funds, I would be crazy not to see if it was worth anything. I certainly would take cash as a gift if it were given to me as a present, so I don't see a big difference between cash and a ticket. But that probably won't happen again because the gift giver recently passed away.
Now while I don't play, I have often thought about what I would do if I were to win several million. Obviously, the first thing I would do is hire a good accountant who could help me handle the money. Then I would want to take care of all the tax obligations the money would bring.
My first priority would be to help my church and my denomination's Bible and Retreat Center pay off their loans. Being able to do that would give me real joy. However, the question would be would they even accept the money since it came from the lottery. I do know about a local school teacher whose wife bought a ticket and didn't tell him. She won the grand prize and wanted to give the money to their church. But the church refused to accept it. While he had been very active in his church for many yers, he eventually left the church not only because of their rejection but also because of the way folks treated him as a "gambler".
My next choice would be to set up scholarships for my seven grandchildren. Three are now in college and some of them have hopes of going to graduate school. The other four will probably also attend college when they graduate from high school. I'd love to be able to help them reach their goals without running up huge debts for their education.
Would I want anything for myself? Well I'd like to take a trip to Alaska while contractors are fixing the many problems in our house so that it could be sold. Then I'd like to sell it and move to a top notch retirement home where we could be cared for the rest of our lives. I really wouldn't need or want much more for us since the Lord has been good to us and has provided all that we really need.
While I don't play, I did have a very unusual thing happen once when I was teaching. One day I was making up additional practice problems to work in front of the class on the overhead projector - anyone remember those things? Three problems in a row unexpectedly ended up with solutions involving the three digits 7, 1, 6. My students and I remarked about this unusual situation and I made the off hand remark that maybe I should break my rules and bet 7, 1, and 6 in the lottery that night. We laughed about it. But the next morning a student brought the results of the lottery to class and showed that ... guess what ... 7, 1, 6 was actually the winner. Wow! And how much did I win? Zero!
So there are my thoughts. They sound good but there is no chance that any of this could happen ... unless somebody else gives me tickets as a gift ... and that probably won't happen again. Incidentally ... just in case you are interested ... my birthday is April 6 ... and of course there is always Christmas ... or Valentines Day ... or June 2, our anniversary!
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