Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Prosperity (05/11/06)
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TITLE: God's Math | Previous Challenge Entry
By Katherine Hussmann Klemp
05/14/06 -
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We have been tithers ever since the first days of our marriage. It is just something we have always done. We don’t really give it much thought. It is a way of life, a habit with us. I don’t ever remember thinking that if only we would cut back our offerings we would have more for ourselves. It just never occurred to us.
We raised eight children in a parsonage on a rural minister’s salary. Some years our children’s’ new school supplies consisted of pencils with their names on them that my coupon conscious husband sent for with carefully collected box tops from cereal boxes, but every year we had an outrageous amount of fun. We lived on one of the best sledding hills in Minnesota, and at least once a winter we would wake the kids up in the middle of the night on a full moon and take them sledding. We flew kites. We had a parachute, bought at one of my weekly garage sale outings, that, when tied high in a tree, would support at least three kids who floated along, cradled at the bottom of its silken shell.
We sang as a family and traveled all over the United States to sing in churches. We were on the road in a converted school bus that meant more to us than any motor home.
All our children went to a Christian grade school, a Christian high school, and all have graduated from college; two with master’s degrees and two with master’s degrees just around the corner. Tuition was a way of life.
I don’t say this to brag. I say it with the same amazement with which you read it. How could this be? No one can afford a big family anymore. I agree.
It seemed like we were pretty poor at the time and yet it didn’t. I know that I knew where every penny went. (I told my husband that we had turned some kind of miraculous corner the other day. I found twenty-one dollars in the drier that I didn’t even know I had lost.) But all I really remember was the wonderful times we had. I remember thinking about how privileged I was to live with these talented people; my husband and children.
And now we live in a nice house and drive a nice car. How did that happen? Weren’t we sacrificing all for our Lord and our family? And so we shake our heads and say, “God’s math. It just must be God’s math.”
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