Agony

It was cold there in the church pew as my hand hovered over my hip pocket. Up at the pulpit, I could see the Pastor doing the same. Our eyes locked. Somewhere in the distance, a clock ticked, a dog howled. A tumbleweed rolled between us. I used my tongue to move the cheroot from one side of my mouth to the other. I squinted. We stared. And then, in a blinding flash, I drew.

It was sweet agony.

I am not a rich person - not by any stretch of the imagination. I am owned more by giant money grubbing corporations than most people. I have never in my whole life owned anything close to even $10,000 (except debt... I've owned a LOT of debt) and that includes properties (though maybe at one time if I had sold my entire X-Men collection when the going was good... but even then I doubt it). As a result I know the value of every cent I have and can usually stretch it to go as far as I possibly can. I've lived on the edge of poverty for so long, I've forgotten that there is a rich center out there somewhere. If I were to ever win the lottery, I wouldn't know what to do with the money.

I had $40 in my wallet. Two $20's and nothing smaller. I needed that money. There were plenty of people in the congregation who had infinitely more than I did - let them put money in the collection plate. If I put a $20 bill in the collection plate, I might not eat this week.

Wave after wave of convictions hit me in the face. The sermon was about having faith. The anthem was about keeping a lamp lit for God. Again and again, I kept thinking about that old woman who only had one copper coin and she had more faith than all the fat cats of Jerusalem because it was her only coin. Surely that didn't apply to me? Surely the old woman had food back in her apartment? Wasn't the one copper coin the only money the old woman had left AFTER a day out at the hair dresser and the florist and a nice meal with her grandchildren? Yes. No. And No. Quit changing the subject.

It was Jesus who saw the woman's sacrifice. Nobody else even paid any attention to her. Yet, I imagined the look on the priest's faces when they collected that offering and saw the single copper coin. "Who threw that in there? They might as well not have even bothered! What are we going to do with one copper coin? We can't pay our electricity bill. We can't feed our priests. We can't even run a website with this coin. Some people have no respect for the Lord." It was Jesus who saw this woman's suffering, who knew what one measly copper coin meant to her, who could see that she would go hungry that night for lack of food, who could see that tomorrow she would be out working and hustling for more coins and that she would make the same sacrifice again and again and again because while she didn't have much, she loved God and she honored God and she returned to God what He had given her so that it might be used to help those even less fortunate than herself. Jesus saw this and He had to point it out to the disciples. Her sacrifice became one of His greatest lessons. And her faith was counted as righteousness.

I pictured the miners trapped in that mine. And I pictured those monsoon victims in India and Bangladesh. And I pictured homeless people on the streets without food or shelter. I could chance it. I could have faith that my sacrifice would not go in vain and that even if I suffered a little, my $20 might go a long way to helping those who suffered a lot.

In the end, though I agonized for half an hour, drawing the $20 from my wallet was easy. Placing it in the collection plate was almost a relief. And I quickly forgot about it.

Except...

I started agonizing about whether I should have put all $40 in the collection plate. I still have so long to go.