Mrs.Baughman was my 6th grade Sunday School teacher. One morning,
she brought a pan of brownies to our class. As the goodies sat over by
her chair, she gave each child a slip of paper marked with a household
expense: house payment, utility bill, phone bill, entertainment, etc.
My slip had a car payment. Before long, Mrs. Baughman picked up the
tray of brownies and began naming the expenses written on the papers.
As we gave her our expenses, she redeemed each one for a brownie.
"Car payment" she announced. I jumped up to get my brownie from the
pan. Finally the last brownie had disappeared. But one boy named Donald
still held his unredeemed slip.
"God!" called Mrs.Baughman. Donald came forward hoping the teacher had
one more brownie hidden some where. With a knife Mrs. Baughman scraped
the crumbs from the bottom of the pan into Donald’s napkin. He got a pretty
raw deal, I thought - just crumbs.
"The brownies represent your money", the teacher explained to us. "If you
don’t give God his share right away, He probably won’t get anything except
maybe the crumbs."
I never
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