A couple of weeks ago our community celebrated the life of an amazing woman. I’ll call her Molly. We knew each other mostly through the friendship of our daughters.
Molly came here from the Philippines some thirty years ago, on her own, to find a job and a home. Two years later the love of her life followed and they were married and eventually blessed with four daughters.
Molly and her husband both had successful careers, but you’d never notice it in their clothes or their home. They kept enough to live on and sent the rest back to their homeland to support their extended family, and to establish organizations for the needy. After Molly and her husband retired, they spent six months of every year in the land of their birth working with the institutions and missions that had become so important to them.
Then, quite suddenly, Molly was called to her heavenly reward. We rejoice with her but also mourn with the family and friends left behind. It’s one of the inevitable emotional rollercoasters of life.
What impressed me most about Molly’s life was her selfless generosity. She didn’t hoard finances for herself or her home. She didn’t look for praise. She just did what God asked of her. I believe Molly had a balanced perspective on life. She realized that life wasn’t about her, but about what God had for her to do. She had the wisdom to know that any wealth she and her husband had attained did not belong to them anyway. It was a gift from God to be used where it was needed.
I pray that we, in our society where everything is available, may recognize the difference between what we need and what we want. To learn, as did Molly, as the apostle Paul did, to be content in whatever situation we find ourselves. To practice generosity in our daily lives in order to bless others as well as to obey God. And to recognize the brevity of life and that what we need to do should be done now.
Thanks for your example, Molly.
“But godliness with contentment is great gain” I Timothy 6:6.
Janice L. Dick 