Since I can’t get out to go shopping for now I have been doing all my Christmas shopping on-line and I really do enjoy doing it that way! I have been thinking and wondering what to get for different members of the family and since I like to get fun things that a person can actually use I have to use my imagination and that is running dry! My daughter was stressing over what to get for her husband and asking him to give her some ideas and he continued to say he would, but he hasn’t done it. Finally she told him that if he didn’t come up with something soon she was going to buy him “Depends” and hoped he was happy with that! I laughed at hearing their banter but opted to keep my mouth shut, not easy for me, right?
All this gift talk brought up a memory from a few years back when something happened that royally ticked me off, I wrote about it in “the Greedy Grinch” but in case you didn’t read it I will quickly remind you before I say what I have to say, that OK with you? My dad had a big heart and if a person got “on his sympathy” he would do things to help them out which translates as giving them a “piece of money”. There was a guy that would come to church on Wednesday night and daddy would hand a $20. to me and ask me to hand it to him after service, if I wasn’t close he would ask one of the ushers to do it for him. After a few time this fellow started coming up to the table where my dad sat to teach his lesson and would hold his hand out. Now that already offended me and I would tell my dad that this guy was taking the advantage of him and his answer was always “That’s alright, God knows all about it.” The last Christmas daddy was alive he taught on the Wednesday night before Christmas and as soon as the service was over this man came up to my dad and held out his hand, daddy handed him a $20. Instead of saying thank you, he looked at it and said, “Since it’s Christmas I would have thought you could have made it $100.” Daddy was in the process of driving his cart back down the aisle and didn’t turn around or comment. When I got him all hooked up in the van I asked if he had heard what “Grinch” had said, he answered, “Yes I heard him and so did God.”
When it is an act of compassion it is freely given and it always makes me feel good to do something nice for a person, but to feel taken the advantage of is another story completely and now the rest of the story…
I was working this morning so instead of watching one more news show and since my mother was asleep I turned on my ITunes to enjoy the music I have bought or downloaded from CDs. There were a few uplifting spiritual tunes then a tune started, I had to stop and think, didn’t recognize it at first, but Peggy Lee was talking, first she talked about watching her house burning down when she was a child, and then her dad takes her to the circus, then she falls in love, and then it comes time to die, are you with me yet, or are you too young to remember? The same refrain repeats after each event, “Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that’s all there is my friend then let’s keep dancing…”
I’ll stop the quote there, but the point is that she was disappointed with everything in life, nothing was ever as bad or as grand as she had imagined it would be. So when it came time to die she was not ready for her “final disappointment”. You may think that sounds negative, and it is, NOW I can tell you what my thoughts were. There was a lady who was a guest in our home, matter of fact it was my grandfather’s 3rd wife (he out-lived the first two) I was doing everything I could to make sure she was well entertained. She had expressed a desire for a certain type of pie and I knew where I could find it but it was at a place in downtown Atlanta, so I made the effort to take her to this fine establishment, I bought her lunch and the pie she had asked for. After that I took her to a department store and bought an expensive bottle of perfume and when we started home (my sister and mother were witnesses) she made a cardinal mistake with me, she said, “I am so disappointed!” I didn’t say anything out of respect to my Pop but later that night I overheard (yes I was eavesdropping) her tell him that we had forced her to eat a piece of pie that was too rich and it had made her sick! I had to use self-control!!
What’s the point of this rant? It is US as a people! We are all ungrateful to God for the good things He has done but quick to complain when something goes wrong and we have to ask for proof of His existence! I am glad I’m not God, there is no telling what I would do to all the ungrateful people, well you can all relax and be grateful that I am an ordinary human with no powers to bring retribution for our piggish, Grinch behavior!
And by the way… here’s my daily Merry Christmas! Really!
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