BUGS FOR HIS BEST!
While working in my office recently, a friend dropped by to visit. During our conversation, I related a story from my childhood. After I finished, he summed it up with this phrase, “Bugs for His Best”.
Intrigued? Well, let me share the story with you. See what you think.
I vividly recall an incident that occurred when I was about eleven years old. Our family had recently moved to a very small mid-western town. My parents became pastors of a local congregation. Yep! You got it! I am a PK (Preacher’s Kid). Things were pretty tight financially. We learned to rely on the Lord to supply our basic family needs. Even in 1949, $25 a week didn’t go far in meeting the needs of a family of five!
I guess our family was always poor. We probably didn’t know it at the time. Well, are you ready for a “poor” story? (Everybody needs a few “poor” stories with which to impress their grandkids!) When I started school, we lived in California. Every morning, my mom would get up a little early, wash out a waxed cardboard milk carton, and cut out inserts for my shoes. That would sometimes go on for weeks. C’mon now – all together – “Poor PapaJ”!
In the congregation was a particular woman (with lavender tinted hair) who came often to speak to my father. She frequently stated that when “her ship came in”, she would make a sizeable donation to the church. This led to sketches on paper, preliminary visits to the lumber yard, dreams of a new addition, a basement under the sanctuary, and renovation for the well-worn Sunday school classrooms. Well, it turned out that getting her “ship” to dock involved winning a national contest or sweepstakes or some such thing.
One day this same woman came to our back door. She had a bag of rice in her hands. The top of the bag was torn open. She said that there were little bugs in the rice so her family wouldn’t eat it. She said that she didn’t want to throw it away and believed that it was good enough for us.
I didn’t know what the word “demeaning” meant. Looking back on it, I’m pretty sure we were definitely demeaned by her words and actions. I do remember feeling a little like pond scum! We were often given clothes that were too tattered for the donor’s children to even think of wearing. Here was a woman who was very willing to accept His best for her and her family. The catch was: In return for His blessings to her, she offered Him “Bugs!” Yes indeedy, “Bugs For His Best!”
While reflecting on this incident, I recalled a story from II Samuel 24. Beginning in verse 21, we read, “Araunah said, ‘Why has my lord the king come to his servant?’ ‘To buy your threshing floor,’ David answered, ‘so I can build an altar to the LORD, that the plague on the people may be stopped.’ Araunah said to David, ‘Let my lord the king take whatever pleases him and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. O king, Araunah gives all this to the king.’ Araunah also said to him, ‘May the LORD your God accept you.’ But the king (David) replied to Araunah, ‘No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.’ So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them.”
What are the Life Lessons
for me in this story?
- In the words of a neat hymn: “Give Of Your Best To The Master”.
- We should give to others those things we’d really rather keep for ourselves.
- God may ultimately judge us not for what we give, but for what we have left over.
- We shouldn’t give to missionaries, pastors, our local church or any folks we consider “in need” anything we wouldn’t wear, eat, or use ourselves.
- That the Psalmist, King David, really knew what he was talking about when he decided that he would not give anything to God that cost him nothing.
While writing this piece, I recalled a story from Loren Cunningham’s book, “Daring To Live On The Edge”. Loren is the founder of Youth With A Mission. “There was a preacher who received a bushel of apples from one of his parishioners. When asked later how his family enjoyed the apples, the preacher replied, ‘They were just right! If they had been any better, you wouldn’t have given them to us, and if they had been any worse, we couldn’t have eaten them!'”
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