Submitted Christian Writings
THE RICH FAMILY IN CHURCH
by S Martin
I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12 and my older
sister Darlene was 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it
was to 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. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as
much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that month's electric
bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat
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 one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted the money to see how
much we had saved. At night we'd 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 figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely
be 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 didn't care that we wouldn't 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 didn't own an umbrella, and the church was over
a mile from our home, but it didn't 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 I 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 bill. 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 didn't 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 the envelope. We didn't 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 didn't 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 knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn't
have a lot of things that other people had, but I'd 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 didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and
felt so ashamed--I didn't 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 didn't know. We'd never known we were poor. We
didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny
day, we didn't 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, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?"
We looked at each other and smiled for the firsttime 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 hadn't 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! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been poor
again.
I've always remembered
how rich I am
because I have Jesus!
Submitted by:
Rev. Dan Cross
Cross of Christ Ministries, Inc.
2408 S Redwood Ave, Broken Arrow, OK 74012 918-461-9582
URL: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Estates/3367/
E-mail: dcross@excalnet.com
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