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Cybersalt News
Sunday greetings, everyone - and happy Resurrection Sunday: The Lord is Risen!
Today is also our youngest daughter's birthday: Happy birthday Esther Bunny!
On Friday we were blessed to be with my parents as they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. From the beginning and down through the years, my parents worked hard and persevered to give my sister and I a good life and to be in the position to give our children strong foundations for them to be building their families today.
As amazing a job that they did through their character and perseverance, we would never have become the family and individuals that we are today without Jesus, whom we placed our faith in many years ago.
As much as Jesus' death for our sins paid the price so we could be forgiven of them by trusting in His sacrifice alone (God's gift to us through faith in receiving it), Jesus' resurrection is a reminder that our faith in Him also raises us to new life in God. In Jesus, there is hope for the next life and also for today!
Enjoy the rest of today's Digest.
~ Pastor Tim
The Resurrection?
When I was young, I often visited my grandmother in Kennett, Missouri.
Every year Kennett high school joined with Carruthersville to put on a production of the resurrection.
A girl from Carruthersville was chosen to play the part of the angel at the tomb.
It was time for her to say her part, "He is not here. He is risen."
She was so nervous that she forgot her line, but rather said, in her best southeast Missouri accent, "Uh, He ain't here. He done gone."
One-Liner #1918
You can always make Easter easier by replacing the "t" with and "i."
"Be a Billionaire!"
and Help
Refugees and
Persecuted Christians
Easter Groan
Hot cross pun, anyone?
Quote #2353
"Of all the things that will surprise us in the resurrection morning, this, I believe, will surprise us most: that we did not love Christ more before we died."
- J.S. Ryle
The Rich Family in Church
By Eddie Ogan
I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Lucy was 12,and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money.
By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.
When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that month's electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for $1.
We made $20 on pot holders. That month was one of the best of our lives.
Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The day before Easter, Lucy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change.
We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before.
That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering.
We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.
But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20.
As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills.
Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night.
We had two knives that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, but I'd never thought we were poor.
That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed--I didn't even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!
I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time. We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never known we were poor. We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way.
Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?" We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Lucy. Lucy put it in the offering.
When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have some rich people in this church."
Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100."
We were the rich family in the church! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been poor again. I've always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus!
Featured Illustrations are items well suited for illustrating or inspiring a point in a sermon, speech, or devotional. Funny, moving, or perhaps even graphic, the point of them is the point you make with them.
Rev. James Snyder, God's Penman, writes . . . .
I Thought She Said “Doughnut”
As hard as I try, and believe me, I try, I don’t always hear correctly, especially regarding The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage. I don’t always hear every word she says.
I know God gave me two ears and only one mouth, but I must confess I use my mouth a lot more than I use my ears, which has created problems.
Read moreThe Cybersalt Digest is a ministry of Pastor Tim and Cybersalt.