If you donate a certain sum of money, your name will be inscribed on the Honour Roll, said the screed. I looked again, carefully, because to that time I had felt impressed to donate my ‘two cents.’
It was shattering to discover that even in donating to the Word of God, in specific terms to spreading the Gospel, most of us would come under Henry Lawson’s famous line, “Second class, wait here.”
Most of us could not afford to reach the Honour Roll and our piggy-bank offerings would go unsung and unhonoured. It was a sobering thought.
I’ve no quarrel with honouring the honourable. Be assured there are many in my life that I would put at top table and count it an honour to wait on them. They’ve earned their stripes.
Among them are young mothers coping with incredible pressures; students coping with stresses I have never known; professional people whose very knowledge and position makes ethical choices the harder. And those with disabilities and those who care for them, handling themselves with superb heroism.
Perhaps above all are the quiet peace-makers, the ones who soothe grief and loneliness in the community, who take the pot of soup and tray of scones to a neighbour.
Certainly I have no difficulty honouring these quietly wonderful people and I make haste to include those who are humorous, artistic or entertaining also because they help to put things in proportion. And those who simply must work hard or cope with no paid work at all, and still manage to keep their sense of value.
Top table material abounds. It abounds in my family and friends, in the people who sit beside me in church or in the cafeteria, at the service station or on road graders and train tracks.
But the power to get wealth is a separate issue, a gift from the Lord incurring responsibility. He has not given that power to everyone and His power is not up for sale, Acts 8:20.
Will somebody send in the widow, please, the widow with the two cents?
(Mark 12:42-44 and Luke 21:2.)