My uncle recites the bible in each and every lesson he seeks to teach me or anyone else. There is always a moral to every story. Often he wants to demonstrate hope as in one story he told me about when he was a little boy. It was during very hard times for their family, not long after his father had been killed in a lumber accident. They had a small tobacco farm and my grandfather gathered all the tobacco so that it could be sold, but the market was very bad and he decided to keep it until the next season. To earn money he went into the north country to work in the lumber yard. A tree fell and killed him. Then one very early morning my grandmother and her kids were woken to the horror of finding the barn on fire. Somehow spontaneous combustion set the tobacco on fire and they lost everything.
Well, they moved to the city so my grandmother could work as a seamstress, but it was really hard to find work during the depression. One day they had no food and she only had 2 cents. It cost 3 cents to buy a loaf of bread. He said it was the only time he had ever seen his mother get on her knees and start praying...she never asked for help from anyone, and she thought people wasted their time to sit and pray for something....they should get off their butt and go work for what they needed!
She told my uncle to go to the grocer and ask if he would please break a loaf of bread so that they would have something to eat. My uncle was very embarrassed, as was my grandmother. But he dutifully left and walked slowly to the grocer's. He kicked stones along the way, trying to waste time and delay having to make his plea to the grocer.
Playing around along the way, he somehow fell in the street and low and behold, there next to his hand lay a penny! He checked to make sure it wasn't one that he already had! No! It was another penny! He quickly skipped off to the grocer and bought a whole loaf of bread! :) He always says, God helps those who help themselves, and waste not, want not....the sayings we have all heard a million times from those of the greatest generation who lived a humble and proud life.