TOUCHING STORY (The Rich Family In Church) Ill never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12, and my older sister Darlene 16.We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it wasto do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money. By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially. When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didnt listen to the radio, wed save money on that months electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us baby sat for everyone we could.For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for$1. We made $20 on pot holders.That month was the best of our lives. Every day we counted the moneyto see how much we had saved.At night wed sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be about 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before. That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didnt care that we wouldnt have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering.We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didnt own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didnt seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes and felt rich. When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20. As we walked home after church,we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door,talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didnt say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money.There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills. Mom put the money back in theenvelope. We didnt talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didnt have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had two knives that we passed around to whomever needed them. I knew we didnt have a lot of things that other people had, but Id never thought we were poor. That Easter day I found out we were.The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didnt like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed. I didnt even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor! I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time.We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didnt know.Wed never known we were poor. We didnt want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didnt talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said,Cant we all sacrifice to help these poor people?We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week. Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.When the offering was counted,the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadnt expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, You must have some rich people in this church.Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that little over $100. We were the rich family in the church! Hadnt the missionary just said so? From that day on Ive never been poor again. Ive always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus! So, friends how rich are you, too? The scriptures says: As a man thinks in his heart, so he is. You could have lots of money and still be very poor. It is not how much money you get but everything about the mentality youre carrying! There is the need to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. See you soon!
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 19:45:28 +0000
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