The Man Who Had Everything — Then Didn't
By 1929, James Cash Penney was one of the richest men in America. His department store chain spanned the nation. His personal fortune exceeded $40 million — roughly $700 million in today's money. He was the picture of the self-made American success story.
Then the stock market crashed. And it took everything.
Penney lost his fortune almost overnight. The stores survived, but his personal wealth was obliterated. Debts crushed him. His health collapsed. He checked into a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, convinced he wouldn't survive the night.
"I Am the Most Miserable Man Alive"
In the sanitarium, Penney hit absolute bottom. He later wrote: "I was so harassed with worry that I couldn't sleep, and my condition became serious enough to be taken to a hospital. I felt I hadn't a friend left in the world — that even God had abandoned me."
One morning, he heard singing from the hospital chapel. He dragged himself in and sat in the back. A hymn was playing: "God Will Take Care of You." Something broke open inside him.
Penney later described that moment as the most transformative experience of his life. He didn't become religious in some performative way. He encountered something real — a presence that met him in the rubble of everything he'd built and lost.
The Second Act
What happened next wasn't instant. It was gradual, gritty, and genuine. Penney returned to work, not as a tycoon but as a man rebuilding from the ground up. He re-engaged with the business. He started giving generously — to churches, to charities, to people he met who were struggling.
By 1951, J.C. Penney Company had over 1,600 stores and was valued at over $1 billion. Penney himself became known not just as a businessman but as a philanthropist who gave away the majority of his second fortune.
He lived to 95, and never stopped crediting that morning in the chapel as the turning point.
What This Means for You
Penney's story isn't about getting rich, losing it, and getting rich again. It's about what happens when everything you built your identity on collapses — and you discover something underneath that can't collapse.
If you're in a financial valley right now, Penney would tell you: that's not the end of your story. Sometimes the most important thing God does with our finances isn't multiplying them. It's showing us what we're really standing on.