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Today's Christian, January/February 1997
The Quarter That Bought a Pastor
This shut-in's mite changed his life forever
-by L. Doward McBain
In a tiny Colorado church where my new wife and I were serving one summer, Mrs. Rolf was one of four devout parishioners who met for prayer each Thursday afternoon. She rarely missed.
She lived with her twelve-year-old son, who was spending the summer herding sheep to buy school clothes for the coming fall. Mrs. Rolf's husband had left her several years earlier for reasons that never seemed clear. She was destitute and received meager relief from the community.
Before we knew it, the summer was gone; our last weekend had come. Saturday night the congregation threw us a farewell party. They brought many practical gifts for the young couple returning to seminary in Philadelphia—kitchen utensils and enough canned goods to last many weeks. But Mrs. Rolf wasn't there.
The next morning the little church was packed for my farewell sermon, but our special friend was missing again. So, shortly after the service, we finished our packing, bagged some extra groceries, and drove out to see Mrs. Rolf.
She answered my knock by a feeble call from her bed. She explained that she was too weak to get up, and regretted not being able to attend our party or the last worship service. She then hinted she was partly relieved because she had no gift to give the minister and his wife. She asked me to pray for her son.
Then before I left she said she remembered she did have something to give. Would I promise to take it? Not being able to refuse her I said yes. She told me where to find it, and I nervously moved to the other room—the only other room in the house.
There was a small table with two chairs, a little potbelly stove and a new lid-lifter she said the relief board had given her the previous week. Her gift was on the top ledge, she said. She must be wrong. But, to be sure, I reached to the far right and slowly brought my hand back across the empty board until I quickly knew that she was right. There it was: a quarter.
I took it to her and said I could not accept it. She reminded me of my promise.
"You must take it. It is all I have to give." I protested, but I took it.
Her last words to me were enough for a lifetime. "Use it as you go back to seminary and prepare to be a good minister of God."
I do not know what happened to that twenty-five cents. I only know what happened to me. In many ways that quarter bought a minister. More than fifty years later, I have never been able to shake off this godly woman's sacrifice.
Copyright © 1997 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
Click here for reprint information.
January/February 1997, Vol. 35, No. 1, Page 81
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