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Today, we're reading Psalm 49, answering the question, what is the price of my life, or does my life have value?

Now, when I was probably 11 or 12, I once received a ton of iTunes store

gift cards for my birthday. It was like that year, everyone at my birthday party, they decided

they're going to get me iTunes store gift cards. So I'd probably racked up around $150,

which for my 11-year-old self was a ton of money and I could not wait to go get some music for my iPod.

And I remember sitting down at the family computer and just going to town.

And I wasn't just buying individual songs. I'm pretty sure I was buying the full albums.

And I almost got to this point where I was just struggling to even think of things to buy.

I had been sitting at the computer shopping for so long, waiting for a notice to come up that the

gift cards were out that I was running out of things I wanted to purchase. And I grew up doing

dance, so I even started buying Nutcracker classical music albums at 11 years old because

that was all I could think of. I'd already exhausted my other options. And eventually I just gave up

and I thought, oh, I'll come back to this later. I still have money left. I'll want something else

in a few weeks. But what I didn't realize was that I, in fact, did not have any money left on those

gift cards. They had run out a long time ago. In every purchase I was making thereafter was

charging to my parents' credit card. I had this false sense of security that I had endless

amounts of money when, in fact, my money had completely run out. I blew through

all $150 in my frivolous purchases that I thought were running out my gift card, were running up my

parent's credit card bill. I was trusting, whether I knew it or not, I was trusting that Apple would

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