Yesterday when
leaving Home Depot an elderly woman, who appeared to be 80ish, sat on a walker
under a tree on the grassy median. She was alone with no transportation in
sight and held a cardboard sign that read, “Hard times, need help.” I’ve seen a
lot of men of various ages and transient couples with their dogs panhandling,
but this was a first. I wondered, “How did you get yourself
situated on this grassy knoll? Where is your family? And why are you begging on
the street?” I couldn’t help but compare the woman to the widow who put two very
small copper coins worth a fraction of a penny into the temple treasury. Jesus
called his disciple to him and said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has
put more into the treasury than all the others. They all
gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all
she had to live on.” (Mark 12:43 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Genesis tells us God created the world in six days and flooded it ten generations later. Usher calculated the world to have been created 4004BC and was flooded 2348BC. The Bible rather implies (much different than expressly stating) that man’s bumbling history will be 6000 years, followed by a thousand years of blessed history. This is a beautiful picture which I want too much to be true.
-----More can be said for Carbon-14 dating than can be said against it. But what can be said against it speaks more to its theoretical base than what can be said for it. Therefore it does not bother me much that Carbon-14 dates some evidences of human activity to 20, 30, 40 thousand years ago. I understand the theory’s assumptions and which cracks of reality those assumptions might drop through. But it is a smattering of ancient astronomical references which bothers my delight in the six-day theory of human history. Some most ancient literature alludes to astronomical alignments we know occurred more than six thousand years ago. Ouch!
-----Although there is a very interesting geological theory put forth by two geology professors, one of Cambridge and one of Oxford, which could possibly nullify the proposed dates of these astronomical alignments, a way-out theory with a lot of evidence none-the-less, there is also a proposition that the Bible could be referring to grandchildren, or even their posterity, when naming the sons of the begetters listed in the Genesis genealogies. So the date of creation could reasonably be pushed back a few to several thousands of years or more (but forget the monkey business, by God‘s nature evolution didn‘t happen.) Yet for the sake of meaning and message in numbers, God chose to record only the relevant parts of history in the Bible.
-----The meaning and message of this elderly panhandler might also need to extend from appearance more than from technical factuality. I recognize your description of her as a panhandler Char and I found sitting there a couple years ago. Her sign then read, “Raising grandchildren without any help.” We both were struck by an illogically sensed sincerity in her placard. We gave. I’ve seen her several times since then with placards of varying heartbreak. I now wonder if she has merely found a more lucrative way of spending her time than sitting in front of the boob-tube. Maybe she now entertains herself by just watching dollars poked at her by real, living boobs. Neither Carbon-14 nor astronomical alignments can answer this question. But, whether she is in real need of money or entertainment, the spectacle she makes serves your message very well.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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