At yesterday's service, you requested that people would send in their testimonies. I started to laugh at the thought of sending in my testimony because it is not one of those foo-foo pretty ones where there is a pot of gold waiting at the end of the rainbow. So many times when I see TV evangelists who bring forth the testimonies of their flocks, it makes me want to vomit. If you would just give…God will richly bless you…and then on and on about how God gave them new jobs, new homes or that ideal spouse that they've been waiting for.

Well, I'm still waiting 20+ years later and all I see sometimes is how God has blessed so many of my peers, but seems to have skipped over me and my family. I don't know if it is a mid-life crisis or what, but I'm uneasy at the thought that I do not have a retirement plan, health insurance, or even a savings account with any real amount of money in it. But then God reminds me of how the first Christians didn't have that either…their retirement plan was the sword, beatings, crucifixions, and an arena full of lions…so I guess I'm a little better off.

And then the Giving Campaign comes up just when I'm thinking that I might have to find a second job to get a little money to fix one of our many cars that have over 160,000 miles on them. Again I chuckle and tell God he is really funny and I try and try to figure out how I'm going to do it…I'm excited to be involved in the Community Center, impressed and awed by the vision of helping our neighbors.

I want to give so much and have been praying for God to bless this family financially so we can give money to this campaign. I have restructured some of our debt, reduced our spending on groceries, shop at thrift stores for clothes, but no relief has been forthcoming. And yet we are still making it.

God has given me an amount to give and it is not a lot of money. Basically, it is the amount I usually spend on buying a pizza on Friday nights as sort of a treat. And if anything changes, I can send more. But I am so excited about what we are doing that I can hardly stand it. I can't wait to get involved in volunteering and wonder if, perhaps, God knowing my heart, has put me in these circumstances so that I can really understand the pain of what these people are going through. If things were different and I was financially successful, would I truly be able to be compassionate, or would I be given to platitudes and a pat on the back?

In all things, I can say I'm truly blessed. I am involved with a church that really IS concerned with the poor, with helping their neighbors, and being a witness to the community of God's love. And with all that I have, I commit to God, learning again that dying to self is a lifetime, long-term commitment.