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THE SUPER RICH!
You are
some of the richest people that have ever
lived on the face of this planet! Really.
I am talking about YOU. Believe me.
Oh, you don’t believe me? I would like
for you to take the following
four-question test. I think it will prove
my point.
If you
can answer three of the following four
questions with a yes, you are among the
10% wealthiest people who've ever lived on
earth:
1.) Do
you own more than one pair of shoes?
2.) Do
you own more than one pair of underwear?
3.) Do
you have a choice of what to eat for at
least one meal out of three?
4.) Do
you have your own transportation?
Um,
well... I guess you might be a little
richer than you thought. Right?
(You'll
notice, however, that the test does not
specify that you can find both shoes out
of a pair, that the underwear is clean,
folded, and put in a drawer, that the food
tastes good, and that the transportation
isn't covered with mud.)
Along
this same line, I want to share with you a
story that I received from Missionary
David Thompson. I was deeply moved by it.
I believe that you will be blessed too.
THE
RICH FAMILY IN CHURCH By
Eddie Ogan
I'll
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 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 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 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 card- board 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. 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 after- noon 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
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 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!
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