[This story is true. And here end the reruns. I hope I’m well enough to post now …]
I was baptized when I was eight. I was short for my age, skinny, and proudly wore a butch cut. The kids would call it a buzz cut today.
My church had less than 100 members, and we met in a converted warehouse, sitting in folding metal chairs bracketed into rows.
The elders decided that if I was old enough to be saved, I was old enough to be put to work. So, on Sunday nights, it became my job to pass out communion. An older man would say the prayers, and I’d take the tray to the members.
Of course, this was Sunday night, and so only members who’d been “Providentially hindered” from attending that morning took communion. When the prayers were said, each Providentially hindered member would stand, letting me know who was to get the bread or grape juice.
After the third prayer, the one for the offering, I noticed that several members who’d stood for the first two prayers were sitting. This puzzled me greatly. After all, there were five acts of worship, and you had to do all five! Even I knew that! And so, I figured they’d gotten too tired to stand. After all, they were old!
Well, there weren’t that many of them, and I could easily remember who’d stood the first two times. Figuring they were tired, it just seemed the polite thing to do to bring them the tray for the offering. After all, it’s five acts of worship and you have to do all five! It’s hardly good enough just to watch the five acts. Even I knew that!
And I knew about the widow’s mite. No one has so little money that they can’t give anything! I’d have happily received a penny from each Providentially hindered member. But zero? I never even considered that this could be possible.
And so, I took the tray to a woman who was sitting but had been standing and stuck it under her face. She shook her head for some reason. I figured she was palsied. I had seen some old people like that. And so I waited. And waited. And then she reached into her purse, grabbed some green bills, and sheepishly stuffed them into the tray.
I figured I’d done a pretty good deed! This woman was tired and in her tiredness had completely forgotten to have her money ready to give. It was only polite to patiently wait for her to grab her offering. It was worth waiting to relieve her of the awful sin of performing only four acts of worship!
I then went to a man who, like the woman, had tired of standing. He was fumbling through his billfold for money, clearly embarrassed that he’d forgotten to stand! And on the evening went. I made sure every single member participated in the collection, just as God had commanded!
Many years later my dad told me that my actions had prompted a special elders’ meeting. Someone wanted to know if they were going to let me keep on collecting for God or were going to teach me to politely let people decline. The elders decided there was no reason to make me stop! And so for years I was the elders’ designated collection agent on Sunday nights!
I was childish and naïve. My views on worship were legalistic. I was a little Pharisee. But, I ask you, was I wrong? Is it wrong to naïvely and simply expect that those who receive the blessing of the communion should share their blessings with those in need? That those who are blessed by being part of the church should help support the church? That someone should consider their mite unworthy to give to God?
Matthew 19:13-15
American Standard Version (ASV)
13 Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should lay his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them.
14 But Jesus said, Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven.
15 And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence.
I grew up in the same thinking and actions.
What would be interesting is to see where the money for those in need actually went. In the church I was raised in, only those worshiping and believing just as we at our church did could receive anything and since that seldom happened, it all went to the preacher or the CHURCH, excuse me, the building. It would of been a misuse of the Lords money to help anyone else from the contribution.
I think that you, at 8, could hardly be considered legalistic. Also, I would rather have heard that the elders had helped you understand that some choose not to give, which would have been hard to understand. Based on the way you described yourself, it would be a lot like my thinking!
I would also hope that the Elders would then make sure that there was sufficient teaching on the subject so as to allow ALL members to understand the purposes of contributing to God. and not to see it lumped the way Alabama John described above.
An eight-year-old just takes what he has been taught, and not yet having learned the gentle art of dissimulation and dissembling, goes out and exercises what he has learned. In liberi veritas.
The only sad thing about this precious anecdote is that the elders did not hear the message that God sent through this most honest of vessels. But they’re adults, hey, watcha gonna do?
This sounds like something I would have done.