Generosity & Sacrifice
by Ellen Clodfelter
This month we are focusing on the discipline of Sacrifice and Generosity. To be honest I haven’t had to sacrifice much in my life, and any kind of generosity that I have made is out of abundance. But looking back at my mother’s and grandmother’s life there is a lot of sacrifice in their life. I remember some of my grandmother’s dying words to me was, “she had a hard life, but it was a good life.” So, I asked my mom if she could help me write this article and to glean some wisdom from their lives.
My grandmother lived a long life of 96 years. When she first married my grandfather, he was stationed on the European front during WW2. He would send her his army paychecks, but they were stolen before she could receive them. During the war she lived with her parents and her two young children. When my grandfather came home from the war, they could only afford to live in a chicken coup and half a garage. He built the first house they lived in. She was a very hard-working farmers’ wife and mother to eight children. She even lost two of her babies when they were very young. When my grandfather died, she had to raise some children on her own. Her life is a true example of sacrifice.
My mother grew up very poor, being the fourth child out of eight. Her clothes were hand-me-downs from her two older sisters. They were poor farmers and worked at the family Garden Store (you can still visit it today). When she was younger, she spent days in the spring picking strawberries for sale. The rest of the year it was her job to wash the dishes while her older siblings were working in the fields. She was so young and small she had to stand on a chair to reach the sink. When she went over to friend’s houses, she would notice that they had nicer clothes and a lot more toys than she did.
She put herself through college by washing dishes at only $1.54 an hour (approximately $12.00 today). After my mom and dad got married, money was very tight. Even though my dad was college educated in Aeronautical Engineering, he was laid off three times in two years. She was working as a schoolteacher and putting my dad through a master’s degree. She saw the nice things other people had and wanted those things. One Sunday morning, the sermon was on Generosity. She had not really studied and thought about the following verses:
Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.
Luke 12:15
Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.
Malachi 3:10
She realized then that her attitude was wrong, and instead of looking at the nice things other people had and wanting them, she started seeing people who had far less than herself. She decided to let go trying to get what everyone else had and be more generous to others who were less fortunate than she. She began to realize how much God had blessed her. She was never hungry, she had loving parents who took care of her, she was safe, clothed and fed.
My mom and dad now support several children who live in Haiti. They were even able to support a child all the way through school and even put her through college. They support several Christian missionaries and have gone on several mission trips. They are the most generous people I know.
They tested God and brought the whole tithe into the storehouse and God threw open the floodgates of heaven and poured out so much blessing on them. They have been blessed beyond what they could have imagined. Sacrifice and Generosity is a never-ending circle. We sacrifice so we can be generous, God blesses us, and we can even more generous.
I am blessed to be able to learn from the generations before me how their sacrifice has been turned into generosity.
