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In our affluent economy of the past two generations many luxuries have become common place. With the steadily increasing power of television and its commercial pitch, our children have come to desire, yea demand, more and more things. The evidence all around seems to indicate that many parents have become an easy mark. I served as a “soda-jerk” in the “Band Boosters” concession stand recently and I was amazed at the amount of money some of the ten-year-folds were given for just that one ball game.
As many of the “little fellows” came back repeatedly to “shoot their wad” at the concession stand I found myself wondering how many of them had been given a pocketful of money and sent off to the ball game by parents who did not have time to go with them. Among the converts to “Hippyism” over the past few years, several who have come from “upper middle class” families have admitted that while their parents gave them everything money could buy, they never had any time for them. I am sure that the easiest gifts we give our families or other loved ones are the ones bought with money; the hardest are those that require our time.
It is no different in God’s family, the church. Monetary gifts are absolutely necessary for the ongoing of the cause. Let us not overlook a major reason for this necessity: because so few will give their time.
Most of the members in any church will give some amount of money during a year’s time. But how many really give much time to spreading the Gospel, visiting the sick, the spiritually weak, the shut-in, the visitors, the lost, the needy. There are numerous jobs around our buildings that need to be done and that we have people capable of doing if they would just give some time; the same, is true of our camp facilities. Our need for giving money would not be relieved by more gifts of time, but the money we give could be spent on primary rather secondary matters.
We have a Gospel meeting coming soon. It will cost some money, but money is not our greatest need for this effort. The most important gift may be the hardest for you to give— the gift of your time to prepare for this meeting properly.
[Note: I wrote this article for and it was published in the September 18, 1973, edition of Sentinel, weekly bulletin of the Sunset Church of Christ, Carlsbad, New Mexico, of which I was editor.]
Attribution: From thescripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner and administrator.
