Hello,
“Pastor!! Pastor!” the
secretary yelled up the stairs to my office. I had heard her yell like this before when something was going on in the
parking lot of our urban sited church.
So, I in my late 20’s but looking like I was in my late teens, puffed up
my chest a bit to make myself look as intimidating as an adolescent looking
pastor could be.
“Pastor! Pastor! Look!” she
said to me as I reached the bottom of the stairs. To my surprise, she was not pointing out the window, but was
holding a piece of paper in both of her hands, cash. Flopping them in the air she said, “Pastor I was counting
last night’s offering from Vacation Bible School, and this (flapping the bill
in her left hand) was wrapped up in this (flapping the bill in her right
hand). What are we going to do?”
Taking a couple of steps closer I saw the source of her concern. The bill in her left hand was a $100.00
bill, and the bill in her right hand was a $1.00 bill. “Someone,” she said, “must not have
known that this (the $100 dollar bill) was behind this (the $1 dollar
bill). What should we do?”
I shrugged and with all of my 5 years of pastoral wisdom said, “I don’t
think that there’s anything that we can do. If someone discovers they are missing $100 dollars, we can
give it back. But if not, I guess
we’ll just have to put it toward Vacation Bible School offering.”
No one said anything, so the $100 dollar bill went into the offering,
which for the sake of the Vacation Bible School was a good thing. That year we had switched our attack on
VBS, and changed it from a kid’s daytime program to an intergenerational
evening program to be funded by the offerings. We averaged over 120 people each night for a week, so we ran
up a bit of a bill…a bill for which that bill really helped.
When the same two bills appeared in the offering the next year’s
Vacation Bible School, I realized that the first time that this happened was
not a mistake (these two bills wrapped in each other appeared every year that I
was at that church). After eight
years at that church, I moved to a different church. As I was going around visiting people, saying good bye, I
stopped at one home, the home of a couple in their 70’s. As we sat sipping coffee in their
dining room, the man looked at me with a teasing glimmer in his eye. “Did you ever find a couple of bills
wrapped around each other in the VBS offering?” he said.
“Yes, as a matter of fact we did,” not knowing if I had been tested year
after year?
“Well,” he said with a large pregnant pause, “I thought it would be fun
to surprise you.” We all chuckled.
His name was Don. His
wife’s name was Mary. I found out
that Don died this past year, and that Mary has been gone for a while. They were gentle souls. He had been a star football quarterback
in his high school years. Their lives had not been spared the struggles that
come with life and raising kids.
But as I knew them, they always remained unflappable and full of faith. The door to their life open to anyone,
and their seats in church filled every Sunday. Mary tended perennial flower gardens, and got me started
perennial gardening, too. Don, in
his 70’s, helped me reroof the flat roof of my garage. Always a gentle smile from Mary. Always a warm handshake from Don.
There are those people in life who probably without great intent make a
big dent in our lives. Mary and
Don were such people for me. As I
age closer to the age when I knew them, I hope that I can be like Don.
I give thanks to God for the intersection of my life with theirs. It was a blessing. It is my hope that God will use me to
likewise bless others….and I hope that God will use you in “Don-like” and “Mary-like”
fashion
For those of you old enough to remember the Nike commercials who had
little kids saying of Michael Jordan, “I want to be like Mike,” I say let them
have Mike, I’d rather be like Don (or Mary) any day!
Have a great day.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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