Viewpoint Brief Bible Study #62 |
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The Christian religion is the worship and service of Jesus Christ. It’s not Mary we worship, but her Son. We worship neither saints, angels, a law code, nor even God’s Spirit. It’s JESUS who is to be honored. The Bible is our guide. |
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Six Cents Worth?
Was it a Faithful God Or A Generous
Butcher in California?
In THE LOOKOUT for 10/23/94 there was a good editorial, a good Letter to the Editor, and at least one very good article (copyrighted, of course.) The article that caught my eye was by BILL O'CONNOR, a preacher and writer then living in Newberg, Oregon.Bill concludes his article by saying that money in a bank is nice, but it buys only what money CAN buy. Going farther than money, FAITH in God opens the way to what only God can do, which is even more than most of us imagine it can be. He says he thinks six cents worth of God's blessing is worth more than $600,000 in a bank toward providing for our needs.
His story is that in the depression year of 1930, Bill's dad was a Bible college student in California. Claude O'Connor and his wife Judith, and the wife's brother and his wife (Murphy & Pearl, who already had two children) and children were sharing a rented house in Pomona. They commuted to Los Angeles five days each week to attend classes in a Bible College. Bill wasn't born yet, but he heard about what happened.
Six people lived together in a little house. The cupboards were bare. Both men worked, but were not due to be paid for several days yet. The evening came when there was literally nothing in the house to eat. The only food left at all was a bag of cornmeal mush.
The families knew they could eat mush as a cereal, or they could bake it, or with a little lard, it could be fried and eaten as cakes. They'd in recent days had it in each of those ways. But today there were no eggs to go with it, no meat to place beside it, no lard in which to fry it. They were coming up empty, and six stomachs were plenty empty already.
A thorough search for funds turned up six pennies. Bill's dad was the volunteer willing to go to the butcher shop to buy six cents worth of lard -- they knew their six cents wouldn't buy more than just a bit of lard, so that's what they'd have to do.
The butcher knew the four students and their two children. Told that they needed to buy six cents worth of lard, the butcher packaged up what he said was two cents worth of lard, suggested they get three cents worth of bacon, and a penny's worth of candy for the kids.
When Claude returned home with his bounty, the family was amazed. He got all that for just six cents! Claude's explanation was simple, "God knew that we were hungry, and he used a kindly butcher to meet our need."
But God gave a blessing to all involved. The children were fed. The students were provided for. The butcher had a chance to BE a blessing (of course he could tell that these folks were in great need without them having to tell him more than just that what they had to spend totalled six cents).
How God meets our needs is up to him. But when we know we need something, we surely should ask, confident that He will provide for us what is best.
I wanted to share the story in the author's words, but chose to reword it for various reasons. You can get it in THE LOOKOUT. It's a tale well told, with the moral that whenever we NEED something, we should ask the God who loves us, and know that He will provide according to the need.
I believe everyone should read THE LOOKOUT and
THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD every week!
Brief Bible Study #62 from Ray Downen. To go back to Viewpoint's first page, click < here. Or here to go on to Viewpoint Study 63. For Ray's concluding remarks, click HERE.
