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EASTER GIVIING

It was the spring of l965. We had been in our first pastorate in Calgary, Alberta, Canada for almost a year. Our salary was $45 a week.

Naturally we placed $4.50 in the offering plate each Sunday as God's tithe. However, knowing also that Christians want to give love offerings above their tithes, we put at least another 50 cents into the plate. On top of that there were other offerings for the youth program, Sunday school, missionary society and so on.

We were approaching our Easter world missions offering. I felt prompted to urge our worshippers to give God a week's salary in addition to the tithe for that world evangelism outreach.

"Grant, you know what you did this morning, don't you?" my wife asked me after the service. Then answering her own question, she continued, "You committed US to give a week's salary in the Easter offering as well. If you expect the others to give, we must set the example."

She was not finding fault with what I had done. She just wanted me to know for certain that somehow we had to squeeze that amount from the paycheck in the few weeks before Easter Sunday.

"Let's make it an even $50," I suggested. "God will show us how to do it if we dare to believe."

Those days trotted by. Before we knew it, we were just days away from Easter morning and we had no $50 to put into the plate for world evangelism.

In addition, we had payments to make on furniture we were buying for our first parsonage, plus we were awaiting the birth of our first child, with those attending bills.

Besides, though we did have a parsonage and utilities paid, we had no gasoline allowance, nor any payments from the congregation toward our health insurance. Also, we were still making up financially for the expense we had had in moving from Kansas City to western Canada.

Thank God for our naive trust! We were too innocent in your youthful faith to believe other than that God would provide as we remained believing and confident.

On the Wednesday morning before Easter, a new couple to the church phoned to invite my wife and me to lunch the following day,. They lived in the country, so this jaunt would be a pleasure. Besides, neither husband nor wife were born-again Christians and we saw this as an opportunity to draw closer to them for the Lord.

After a delicious meal and conversation, Priscilla and I said our good-byes, and started to leave for our Metropolitan (our tiny stand-by of an excuse for a car). Just as we were going through the door, the man of the house said he had a book he thought I would like to read. I took it and thanked him.

As we drove down their lane, my wife leafed through the book and came upon an envelope tucked between the pages. Opening it she took out an Easter card with a message and a check in the amount of $50.

There was our world evangelism offering!

Since that day we have always given a week's salary to world evangelism in the church's world missions appeal. And every time the devil whispers in our ears that we cannot afford it, or we can skip once, or we are foolish to keep up such a tradition.

We tell the devil to get behind us for we are going to prove God and His bountiful blessings. Not once have we been disappointed in our love gifts to world evangelism for the Lord has always surprised us beyond measure with His love in return.

___________________

J. Grant Swank, Jr., Pastor, New Hope Church, Windham ME

EASTER FACES

While kicking stones by the bay's edge the other morning, I flashed back to
forty years ago. That rekindled one particular mind-snapshot.

It was during the civil rights days that I met Mr. Brown, appropriately
named since his skin was that color.

He walked toward me up one of those sunny avenues in High Point, North
Carolina. That was the first time we would shake hands--back in the summer
of 1962.

What an Easter face he wore. And it was genuine. No put-ons for this fellow.

In fact, Mr. Brown, deacon and trustee of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church,
was rather shy. He was a single man who tended to business, not much for
show.

However, one would never know it by his yard tucked about his tidy home.
That lawn overflowed with glory-shined flowers, flowers and more flowers.
That was the just pride of his entire neighborhood.

It was Mr. Brown who welcomed Priscilla and me to both community and
congregation. Then when we left the Carolinas in late August for more
seminary training elsewhere, it was Mr. Brown who bade us farewell.

In the meantimes, he would see that we found our ways about town, met some
of the black community leadership, and were entertained grandly in his own
dining room. He could serve up some of the most scrumptious foods
remembered.

Down through the years we kept in touch with one particular black couple
from that church. And so with that letter bridge, we kept up with Mr.
Brown's doings.

Therefore, it was with a heavy heart that I opened last week's envelope from
Eddie and Fannie to read Mr. George Brown's homegoing worship bulletin. And with that I took my time--rolling over every word, putting myself into those church pews for the service, and listening to "Amazing Grace" one more time as rendered by that very articulate, swingin' choir.

There on the bulletin's front cover was his photo--just as I had remembered
him. Mr. Brown with the Easter face--open, shining, happy and filled with
fresh hope.

With that the good Lord recently decided to scoop up Mr. Brown in his early 90s. What a bane for the rest of us. What a boon for heaven.

I wrote to the congregation to share with them how much my wife and I
revered that gentle man. Then after sealing that envelope, I tried to sum up
what it truly was that caught our hearts as we remembered George.

So now I share that capsule thought with you: Mr. Brown wore an Easter face
because He lived daily the resurrection power in an unobtrusive way. It was
not with self-conscious drama nor pious prance but with a sincere love for Jesus that Mr. Brown woke up each morning.

In that, Mr. Brown reminded me of Jesus Himself. After He rose from the
dead, He went about having breakfast on the beach with the boys, meeting
with some friends in a neighborhood house, and chatting with a couple of
pals along the Emmaus Road.

Nothing outlandish. Nothing to grab Jerusalem's headlines. But oh how real,
how necessary.

Living here in Maine’s Lakes Region, I thank God that I have discovered some Mr. Brown Easter faces--plain and simple, holy and refreshing with heaven's morning smile.

__________________________

J. Grant Swank, Jr., Pastor, New Hope Church, Windham ME