Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Write something AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL (10/02/14)
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TITLE: The Past Steps on the Heels of the Present | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marlene Bonney
10/07/14 -
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My parents’ divorce a few months earlier, the national tragedy of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and my father’s sudden, debilitating illness were rugs pulled out from under my sheltered existence, threatening my security.
I counted on God to get me through, though, even then, and the gift of spending an entire week with my Christian maternal grandparents was tonic for my troubled soul. Their quiet lifestyle—so different from the frantic comings and goings of my mother and two brothers, the squabbling and fighting—was itself a buoy to my spirits.
On Monday, I helped Grandma with the washing, in her basement-housed monstrosity of a wringer/washer, where I felt like a laundry queen, sending handkerchiefs through the double rollers. Admonishment to keep my fingers back from its jaws hung in the air as surely as the clothes-pinned underwear on the lines strung behind us.
In between the rest of the week’s household chores, we played board games like Uncle Wiggley, Go To The Head of the Class, Pit, and Touring and looked at slides with an old-fashioned View-Master, Grandpa joining in when he wasn’t at work. On Sunday, we went to Sunday School and church.
There I heard a sermon that changed my life forever. I still remember the theme that became the catalyst, the turning point, in my fledgling spiritual walk. The challenge given was to “give God the first day of every week, the first part of every dollar, the first hour of every day, and the first place in your heart.” Those words had a profound effect on me, as if God Himself was inviting me into a closer relationship with Him. I pondered them as we returned back to Grandpa and Grandma’s house for a scrumptious dinner, followed by naptime. It was all topped off with an evening church service before our nightly screened-in front porch before bedtime ritual of drinking ice-cream mixed with ginger ale while we sat in webbed canvas rocking chairs and listened to the crickets and enjoyed the gentle breeze of eventide.
In the morning, I returned to my own house and the next day, I launched “Operation God-search” in earnest. My father had been hospitalized during this time, my mother returning to our home to care for me and my two brothers (none of whom were Christians) so I was on my own in this quest. I remember arising an hour before anyone else awoke and sitting on our living room davenport, Bible on my lap, and talking to God as my closest friend. I poured out my heart to Him there in the silence of the sleeping house, a Father and His daughter communing together. He spoke to me there in my heart as I read from His Word and received comfort and peace in His presence. I began to tithe that very next week, setting aside 10% of anything I was paid for babysitting, odd jobs, and chores allowance and put it in the offering plate each Sunday, another way to thank Him for the gift of His only Son, Jesus—Who paid for my sins on the cross—and for His blessings. And His Holy Spirit comforted me and helped me, giving me strength to endure and to stand strong in the midst of the unbelief of the ones I was living with, as well as in the public school system where good morals and values were spurned. Many times I felt like the proverbial flower sprouting up between a sidewalk crack, refusing to be squashed by unbelief and worldliness.
But I continued to follow the plan mapped out for me from that single sermon those many years ago by going to church on Sundays and honoring God the remainder of those days with rest and family and fellowship times, giving tithe of my income, and meeting with Him each morning before the distractions of the day interrupt me. This is not to say that I do not miss sometimes, but the habits developed in my youth are so longstanding and deeply rooted, I cannot deviate for very long without feeling a great loss and emptiness of soul.
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I loved this, and I'm sure others will be equally impressed by it: “give God the first day of every week, the first part of every dollar, the first hour of every day, and the first place in your heart.”
Lovely!
God bless~