This Reminds Me Of That Which Reminds Me Of…

I drove Ginny to work early so I could again sit with the car at to Erbaughs Auto Fitness so more the mechanic could test for the next thing and do the work…

Except that the tests showed the next thing would cost an additional $1,300.00!

Not having that much change in my pocket, I decided we can live with the problem, after all it does not effect safety, just comfort and cosmetics. Erbaugh’s had already done the essential work on Tuesday.

As I drove back home I remembered another garage where I had some brake work done years ago. A lady drove in and got out of her VW Hatchback.

This was an interesting sight because her doors would not unlock. She had to crawl over the seats to the rear and open the hatchback to get out of her car. Since she was not quite as fat as I am and since she was wearing a skirt, this made for an interesting operation.

She was also in the garage for brake work.

As we waited forever for our cars to be repaired she told me that she was a social worker and drove around all day visiting needy families thus had to get in and out of her car numerous times a day so when the door locks broke, she had to climb in and out of the back.

When the guy came out and told her what it would cost, she was dismayed. It cost much more than she anticipated. She could not afford to have the work done.

Down and discouraged, she climbed back in through the back of her VW and drove away.

Now in the course of our conversation, I’d learned her name and where she worked.

That next week I told another Christian about this social worker’s car problems. The Christian gave me a hundred dollars to give anonymously to the social worker for car repairs. I called her and…

Talk about leery!

Here this guy who she chatted with for 15 minutes in a garage calls saying he has a hundred dollars for her if she wants to meet him in a public place.

A likely story.

However, I must have a kind face which inspires confidence, because she agreed to meet me in a very public place where I delivered the money to her.

She could not believe that a total stranger would send her help through another total stranger without even knowing anything about her.

I explained that Jesus told us to give in secret and that is what the Christian friend wanted to do. I was just the delivery boy…

That reminds me of another Christian who gave in secret:

A waitress at a favorite restaurant was talking one morning saying that her car had been broken into the night before. The thief stole this and that but the real damage was that he’d smashed her front windshield to get into the car. Her insurance would not cover the damage and she could not afford to get it fixed and she had no way to get to work if she could not drive her car.

Another Christian friend heard this and went to an ATM and withdrew cash; he gave it to me to deliver to her to get her windshield replaced.

He asked me to deliver the money because he wanted to give in secret, so that no one but God would get thanked.

That’s the way Jesus told us to give, open-heartedly and in secret not letting our right hand know what the left is doing so that people will see the good works and glorify our Father in heaven.

That reminds me…

Once at lunch with a lady I know, our table was near the coffee station and we overheard two waitresses talking as they worked. One girl was telling the other about her college classes, her grades and how she lacked a couple of hundred dollars to pay tuition next semester so she would have to drop out…

My friend reached in her purse, took out her checkbook and wrote a check for the amount the waitress mentioned needing for tuition. Since this was not even the waitress serving our table, she got the girls name from the manager, folded the check and gave it to him asking him to give it to the student after we left.

That waitress would never know where her tuition money came from.

“Take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them,” Jesus said.

He said the same thing about praying and fasting as He does about giving.

But that reminds me…

Once I visited a church where there were dozens and dozens of bronze plaques saying who had donated this or that so that everyone would know about the donor’s generosity. That makes me uncomfortable.

Personally I give so little to help others that I’d be ashamed for people to know about my giving. I suspect that’s why Jesus said what He did; He knows we’d be embarrassed if our parsimoniousness were made public.

But that reminds me…

There’s this great cartoon:

A man in a business suit, like a banker, sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons out of a paper sack. In front of him is a bronze plaque announcing:

THESE CRUMBS ARE BROUGHT TO YOU
BY A GRANT FROM
THE AUTHUR L. FOURACKER FOUNDATION

That breaks me up.

But it also reminds me…

When I was a kid there was this song.

I think it may have been about a sailor who wanted a statue of himself erected in a city park where there were already statures of Abraham Lincoln and General Robert E. Lee. This song may have been about a WWII memorial or something of the sort and the sailor singing it thinks about pigeons in that park so the refrain went something like this:

Oh, they build nests on Lincoln,
And they build nests on Lee,
What will they do on me, on me?
Oh What will they do on me?