.
In 2004, I spent two weeks working at a little Jamaican Church out of Brownstown, Jamaica. Our job was to replace the roof of the old church with a metal roof that would be more durable in the hot damp weather and better suited to endure the high winds and rain of hurricanes. We stood in the back of a flat bed truck as we made the 30-minute drive down some of the worst roads I have ever known. When we came to the church, our mouths dropped as we stood there in amazement, wondering where we should really start to make this an appropriate worship area. The roof was bad, but it was no worse than the rest of the structure. We knew we had our work cut out for us.
Sitting just beside the front door of the church was a little lady in a wonderfully colorful dress with a bonnet on her head and a warm white smile as she greeted each one of us with two-handed handshakes from soft kind hands. “Welcome,” she said to each one of us in her beautiful Jamaican accent. She told us her name was “Winifred” and that she was a lifetime member of the church.
As work began, we recognized that as permanently ruined as the church was, Winifred, the lifetime member, was perfectly fixed in her faith and would be permanently present for the whole two-week operation. We soon learned that the church body was not in as much decline as the church building since the parish was filled with abundant and faithful members. That is a better situation than the other way around.
Winifred brought us water and told us stories about the wonderful worship in this church over her years of membership. When we removed the pews and altar for preservation from the risk of damage due to the work, Winifred kept all of the items wiped clean of dust, made sure they were stacked just perfectly to avoid damage, and stood guard over any attempt to disrespect the sanctuary. Winifred was as sacrificially careful as she was faithful.
Winifred and I became good friends and on four occasions, Winifred invited me to spend the night at her home with her family; a daughter and 3 grandchildren. I was an honored guest at their home on those evenings, the meals were excellent and filling, and the night’s rest was peaceful in a hammock strung under the eves of her home where I could hear the local parrots as they cooed the night away.
On our last day at the work site, as we finished placing the worship items back into the church, Winifred could not stop admiring the new metal roof while again and again pointing out the improved ventilation due to some of our creative engineering. She also gave us two-handed handshakes with red eyes from grateful tears as her joy and gratitude was impossible to contain.
Just before leaving for the last time, Winifred had us sit as she spoke to us from her heart about our work and the wonderful worship for God’s Kingdom that would take place under our roof for years to come. Her Jamaican words were glorious, and the sweet flow comes to my mind even as I now write of this event 6 years later.
Then, she came over to me and gave me a big bag of “pimento,” the Jamaican word for allspice. This spice is a mainstay in “jerk” cooking for which the Jamaicans are known. Winifred grew this spice at her home and sold it to make money for the education of her grandchildren. The huge bag was enough to provide a week of education for her three granddaughters. I was humbled to my knees. I cried openly in unworthy gratitude and embarrassment. How could I, a salaried minister from the most affluent nation in the world, accept this gift from a poor Jamaican woman whose diet consisted of what she could grow or what her few chickens could produce?
I was being taught about giving from a poor Jamaican woman. Winifred had opened up the heavens to reveal to me how I should give. She had reordered my understanding of wealth and stewardship in a way I have never known.
On that afternoon I learned to view my tithe and gifts to the church not from my perspective but from God’s perspective. To this day, when I give, work, or serve, I ask, “What does this offering mean to God?”
In Isaiah 1 and in other writings of the prophets, it is plain that not every offering (sacrifice) is pleasing to God. In the Gospels many statements that Jesus made about tithing expressed that there gift was an abomination against the tither (Luke 11:42, and 18:9-14). However, God was overwhelmed with joy at the gift of the widow who put two small coins from her poverty into the temple offering, and God was pleased when Zacchaeus promised to give away half of all he had taken unjustly from the poor.
Today, when I give, I always ask, “Is God pleased with my offering?” When I pledge I ask, “Is God praised by my pledge?” When I serve, I ask, “Is God served by my work?” No one can answer these questions for me. I alone must pray and discern what God would expect and then do my best to overwhelm God that God might be touched by my sacrifice. I never forget how Winifred trusted God enough to give out of her simple life without regard or fear. She gave only out of her generous heart.
Every day, I have a living example of how to give. Winifred is my example. I owe God tearful, two-handed handshakes and gifts out of my sacrificial gratitude.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
The Thumbprint of God
.
A little piece of clay is in my desk drawer all of the time. I don’t know why I keep it, but I do. I found it in a little junk store many years ago. The proprietor of the store had collected tens of thousands of items from all over the world that were of no real value as a whole. A gear from a hospital bed, a wrench from a T-Model Ford, a bolt of cloth with sunflowers: all might be items a shopper could find while meandering through the non-distinct aisles, stepping over or walking around items that had fallen over. As a whole, this store’s merchandise was just a large collection of junk.
However, if someone were looking for a T-Model Ford wrench or some sunflower cloth for a snazzy pair of pants, well this storehouse of odd treasures would be the right place to explore. (I doubt whether that hospital bed gear ever sold, since I am sure it lacked any suitable suitors.)
I do not believe the proprietor paid very much for the collection of odds and ends. I have always believed these things were acquired at the end of an auction sale where the expensive items were sold individually for large sums of money. However, once the nice things were gone, the auctioneer, a bit raspy from the vicious bidding, would look at the motley collection and say, “Who will give me a bid on this box of leftovers?” I believe our junk shop proprietor was always around when these bids were offered. Probably, as the purchasers of the expensive items were exiting the bidding parlor with their treasures, our proprietor was attentive to offer a dollar for that old box of junk. I believe he purchased many, many boxes of such junk, which he transported to his home and then stored in huge piles around his property.
Now, by the time I am shopping, the items have been brought out of their hiding places and are being displayed for sale to anyone who will make an offer. The thousands of “dollar boxes” are becoming hundreds of dollars per month to sweeten the proprietor’s retirement. Lucky, the proprietor’s dog probably also benefits with some special bones or extra treats along the way.
As I browse, (one of my favorite activities), through the mountains and rows of items, I find little of interest. How bothersome to navigate through all of this vast collection and to find nothing of value to purchase. Surely there must be something to purchase. Guilt riddles me as I contemplate the affront of looking at all of the stuff and not offering a good affirmation to the proprietor with a purchase of anything. It would be a social disgrace and embarrassment to walk through any such repository and to not make a purchase. It would be as if you were telling the proprietor that his stuff was not worth a purchase. To enter, look, meander, or browse and to leave without a purchase would be a snub, an indignity, and an insolent act. Your grandmother would shake the mold off the tomb stone to even imagine that a scion of her lineage could act “suchly.”
So, to keep what little decency remained in our family, I walked by a bowl filled with little trinkets, and I selected a little lump of clay. With hardly a glance, I offered a dollar for the oddity; he agreed with the overture, and the deal was set with the simple exchange of currency. I exited, being pleased to have salvaged the remnant of family seemliness, proving once again that, poor as we may have been, we did not join with the other poor who enjoy a lesser quantity of decencies and necessaries.
Only as I exited into the sunlight was I more able to closely look at the soft-fired clay to find that I had actually bought a simple relief sculpture, the size of a nickel, created by an artisan whom I believe to have been an Aztec priest from 4,000 years ago, ... maybe. (Who is to say it was not?) The simple sculpture is of a head-dressed female with tiny holes poked where the nose, ears, and eyes are customarily found.
However, the remarkable portion of this find was not on the relief-sculptured side but, rather, was on the thumb-pressed back side, for it was there that I found the actual unique thumbprint of the ancient sculptor. In my hand was not only a piece of purposeful artwork but also a personal and biological identification of the creator. I was holding the imprint of a child of God, who I would never meet, an ancestral fellow of sorts, who had passed along a lineage of art and heritage. In my hand I now held a piece of simple creativity that exhibited a mysterious link of humanity in the past, (from my perspective), with an unlikely and unimagined purchaser (from the perspective of the ancient priest). While holding this artifact I gained the sense of forever being tied to the unknown and unnamed creator with the clay-stained thumb. I doubt whether the artisan on the other end would have imagined me, the one with the secure and guarded decency.
To this day, as I come across this relic harbored in my drawer, while looking for a paper clip, pair of scissors, or note card, I stop and take a minute, remembering that I, too, am the mysterious proof of a creator God who took the dirt of the earth for the elements, the divine spittle for the unction, to create me in an image that I could never imagine or fathom. The thumbprint of God is all over me and all over all of God’s creation. We are the evidence of a plan, a past, and a careful ordering. Just as we bear the thumbprint of God, God bears the remnant stains of our creation material. God is implicated with the stained hands that bear witness to the act of our creation.
In my wildest dreams I do not believe I could imagine God. But I am the created evidence that God did and can imagine me. I am wonderfully made but commonly ordered to serve, worship, thrive, surrender, and humbly stand as a witness of the sacred act of a present God.
From an ordered creation I am made, from a personal price upon a cross I am bought, and from a glorious promise I am marked as suitable and presentable to the feted Kingdom of God. We are evidence not only of an ancient beginning but also of an incarnate present and a promised sacred future.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com
A little piece of clay is in my desk drawer all of the time. I don’t know why I keep it, but I do. I found it in a little junk store many years ago. The proprietor of the store had collected tens of thousands of items from all over the world that were of no real value as a whole. A gear from a hospital bed, a wrench from a T-Model Ford, a bolt of cloth with sunflowers: all might be items a shopper could find while meandering through the non-distinct aisles, stepping over or walking around items that had fallen over. As a whole, this store’s merchandise was just a large collection of junk.
However, if someone were looking for a T-Model Ford wrench or some sunflower cloth for a snazzy pair of pants, well this storehouse of odd treasures would be the right place to explore. (I doubt whether that hospital bed gear ever sold, since I am sure it lacked any suitable suitors.)
I do not believe the proprietor paid very much for the collection of odds and ends. I have always believed these things were acquired at the end of an auction sale where the expensive items were sold individually for large sums of money. However, once the nice things were gone, the auctioneer, a bit raspy from the vicious bidding, would look at the motley collection and say, “Who will give me a bid on this box of leftovers?” I believe our junk shop proprietor was always around when these bids were offered. Probably, as the purchasers of the expensive items were exiting the bidding parlor with their treasures, our proprietor was attentive to offer a dollar for that old box of junk. I believe he purchased many, many boxes of such junk, which he transported to his home and then stored in huge piles around his property.
Now, by the time I am shopping, the items have been brought out of their hiding places and are being displayed for sale to anyone who will make an offer. The thousands of “dollar boxes” are becoming hundreds of dollars per month to sweeten the proprietor’s retirement. Lucky, the proprietor’s dog probably also benefits with some special bones or extra treats along the way.
As I browse, (one of my favorite activities), through the mountains and rows of items, I find little of interest. How bothersome to navigate through all of this vast collection and to find nothing of value to purchase. Surely there must be something to purchase. Guilt riddles me as I contemplate the affront of looking at all of the stuff and not offering a good affirmation to the proprietor with a purchase of anything. It would be a social disgrace and embarrassment to walk through any such repository and to not make a purchase. It would be as if you were telling the proprietor that his stuff was not worth a purchase. To enter, look, meander, or browse and to leave without a purchase would be a snub, an indignity, and an insolent act. Your grandmother would shake the mold off the tomb stone to even imagine that a scion of her lineage could act “suchly.”
So, to keep what little decency remained in our family, I walked by a bowl filled with little trinkets, and I selected a little lump of clay. With hardly a glance, I offered a dollar for the oddity; he agreed with the overture, and the deal was set with the simple exchange of currency. I exited, being pleased to have salvaged the remnant of family seemliness, proving once again that, poor as we may have been, we did not join with the other poor who enjoy a lesser quantity of decencies and necessaries.
Only as I exited into the sunlight was I more able to closely look at the soft-fired clay to find that I had actually bought a simple relief sculpture, the size of a nickel, created by an artisan whom I believe to have been an Aztec priest from 4,000 years ago, ... maybe. (Who is to say it was not?) The simple sculpture is of a head-dressed female with tiny holes poked where the nose, ears, and eyes are customarily found.
However, the remarkable portion of this find was not on the relief-sculptured side but, rather, was on the thumb-pressed back side, for it was there that I found the actual unique thumbprint of the ancient sculptor. In my hand was not only a piece of purposeful artwork but also a personal and biological identification of the creator. I was holding the imprint of a child of God, who I would never meet, an ancestral fellow of sorts, who had passed along a lineage of art and heritage. In my hand I now held a piece of simple creativity that exhibited a mysterious link of humanity in the past, (from my perspective), with an unlikely and unimagined purchaser (from the perspective of the ancient priest). While holding this artifact I gained the sense of forever being tied to the unknown and unnamed creator with the clay-stained thumb. I doubt whether the artisan on the other end would have imagined me, the one with the secure and guarded decency.
To this day, as I come across this relic harbored in my drawer, while looking for a paper clip, pair of scissors, or note card, I stop and take a minute, remembering that I, too, am the mysterious proof of a creator God who took the dirt of the earth for the elements, the divine spittle for the unction, to create me in an image that I could never imagine or fathom. The thumbprint of God is all over me and all over all of God’s creation. We are the evidence of a plan, a past, and a careful ordering. Just as we bear the thumbprint of God, God bears the remnant stains of our creation material. God is implicated with the stained hands that bear witness to the act of our creation.
In my wildest dreams I do not believe I could imagine God. But I am the created evidence that God did and can imagine me. I am wonderfully made but commonly ordered to serve, worship, thrive, surrender, and humbly stand as a witness of the sacred act of a present God.
From an ordered creation I am made, from a personal price upon a cross I am bought, and from a glorious promise I am marked as suitable and presentable to the feted Kingdom of God. We are evidence not only of an ancient beginning but also of an incarnate present and a promised sacred future.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)