Money In The Attic – Knox Vancouver

On hiding places, and the treasure nobody could take.

September 22, 2026
by Richard Yung Chung

So… my mother did not trust banks.

She was not alone in that. Her whole generation felt putting money in the banks was not safe. So they used to store their money under the mattress; or behind the furniture, or behind the wallpaper, or in between painting frames.

I knew where my mom used to hide her money; up in the attic, under a pile of blankets.

I could access it anytime I wanted. But I didn’t.

I was a good boy.

But they were not safe. That is the part I want you to hold onto, because everything else in this piece hangs off it. She chose the safest place she could think of, and it was not safe at all. Attics burn. Wallpaper peels. A pile of blankets protects nothing from anybody.

Now, I bank online, and I want to be clear that I think I am the sensible one in this story.

In the past, we used to do our banking in person, standing in line, waiting for the bank clerk to stamp the booklet after we deposited our money. Remember, folks, we used to have our savings account booklet.

Good old days.

(Do any of you still go to your physical bank branch to pay bills in person? Wow… bless your hearts. Do any of you still use a landline phone at home? Wow… bless your hearts.)

I only went to a physical bank branch once last year, to sign something. And I wasn’t really happy, because I felt I wasted my time visiting a branch to sign something on a piece of paper, something we could do digitally.

And there is one more advantage, which I enjoy more than I should.

I don’t have to worry about getting robbed at night. Meeting a robber… “Hey – give me all your money.”

And I say sorry, I don’t carry cash. I don’t even carry my credit card or bank cards. I have them on my iPhone. You can take my phone. But good luck opening it. It only recognizes my face; not your ugly face.

Oh I can wire transfer money if you want. What’s your e-mail address? But before that happens, you will hear from the police.

So why don’t you just go away.

The trouble is that nobody has to meet me in a parking lot anymore.

I read somewhere that one third of people get hacked online or lose their money or data to cyber hackers. Online robbers. Unfortunately, there are more online robbers than physical bank robbers. They steal a lot of money and personal data by hacking into individual bank accounts, businesses, hospitals, schools, non-profit organizations, governments, and even churches.

I got hacked several times. Fortunately, I recovered all my data. So I changed my passwords after. They used to be numbers associated with my family birthdates, but not anymore. I use the passwords generated by the computer that’s hard to crack and hard to remember, for me as well.

Which means, if we are being honest about it, that I have handed my keys to a machine and hoped for the best. And that goes for all my documents and data that I store in iCloud.

So I am not sure I have improved on my mother at all. I have only moved the problem somewhere with better lighting. She had blankets. I have encryption. The hiding place got cleverer; the hiding did not stop.

Every generation invents a better attic.

Jesus said, “store your treasure in heaven.” It’s safe there.

Now, when Jesus said “heaven,” he didn’t mean online banking or iCloud storage for your personal data.

Hey, Jesus said to store my treasure in heaven… I keep my treasure in iCloud… isn’t that the same? Heaven – Cloud?

No.

And he did not mean somewhere above the weather, either. Many ancient people believed that heaven was a location where God dwelled beyond the physical cloud; a very high place. They thought God lived way, way high up, where no human being can access.

I’m sure none of you think that way. It’s the 21st century. We know what’s out there beyond the clouds.

I don’t know about you, but when I take a plane and fly over the clouds, I’ve never seen any white-bearded old man waving at me.

Did you?

I think what he was pointing at is simpler and harder than a location. There are things in a life that can be taken from you; money, certainly, but also health, and position, and reputation. No attic and no password has ever changed that. And then there are the things nobody can take, for the simple reason that they were never stored anywhere to begin with. They were spent on somebody.

I should tell you what my mother was actually hiding up there. It was not a fortune. It was grocery money that was earned in long hours, for seven children and a husband who could not get out of bed. She put it where she could find it in the dark.

It is all long gone. It bought groceries, which is what it was for.

But there were seven of us, and every one of us came out carrying some version of what she had. She hardly spoke about her faith. She seldom made it to church. She was working. She simply told us to go, and then went out and did whatever the day required, year after year, without complaining and without explaining.

She hid her money where she was certain nobody could reach it, and she was wrong about that.

Everything that actually mattered, she left lying out in the open, where all seven of us could see it.

And nobody has ever been able to take it.

Richard