It’s sad to admit, but honesty is not as “normal” as it used to be. I hesitate to say that most people aren’t honest, because I don’t really know that. But the way things are going, it sure makes you wonder. There is a reason I say this. Last week, August 8-11, my husband worked for the Potawatomi tribe. Every year, a different band of the tribe hosts what they call “The Gathering”. There are bands from all over, from Kansas to Canada. This year, it was the Forest County Potawatomi’s turn to host the event. And my husband was “hired” to help with the food. (I say hired very loosely because he is not an employee of the tribe, so FICA and taxes were not taken out of his check. That is something we are responsible to do come February. )
Anyway, he was told that he would be paid a certain hourly wage. He ended up working about 39 hours in 4 days! Which, by the way, is the reason for this post. His check came on Friday and it was quite substantially far above what we were expecting. On Saturday (Aug 11), he did end up working 9 hours for $5 more an hour, but even with that included, the numbers just weren’t adding up. So he called the lady who was in charge to ask if there had been a mistake.
She said that no, it wasn’t a mistake. There was “extra” money, so they gave everyone extra in their check. Okay. Cool. But what is interesting is this: my husband’s father saw this lady last night (Saturday Aug 18) at a Pow Wow. And she remarked to him that everyone (15 people?) who worked with the food, got extra money in their check (she told my father~in~law that there was the extra money, which is how we found that out). But Adam was the only one who called and asked about it. Now, when I say extra, I mean extra! We figured about $622 would be his check amount and this was fine, because the $622 was “extra” anyway. So when the check came to be a whopping $895, it was a bit of a shock! It’s not like $50 or even $100 more that could be easily missed.
And that makes me wonder why no one else asked. Surely they must have noticed! Who could not? When Adam was figuring this out at work, his co-workers kept saying, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!”. In other words, if it was their mistake, oh well. Don’t bring it to their attention. Their loss is your gain. But this is not what Christ teaches us. We must walk blameless in front of God, in everything. And we certainly wouldn’t be blameless if we purposely hid this information and didn’t ask any questions about it. And she noticed this. She noticed this so much that she made mention to his father about it. Our actions are noticed and remembered. Once you have a testimony for God and people know what you stand for, they will remember when you live according to that testimony, because you will “stick out” from everyone else. They will also remember when you don’t (which, I must admit, is the harder of the two to “live with”). Only through God’s help and strength, can our lives be pleasing, as much as possible, to Him in all things.
* I have a prayer request for those of you who are reading this. There has been an idea that I have been thinking about and mulling over for about 3 years (not continually, but it comes up every so often). It is an opportunity to get schooling for writing children’s literature. It would cost about $350 for the entire 18 month course (but it is also a “self paced” course, so it could take longer if needed). This is something I really desire to do and I have for quite some time. I need God’s guidance in this. It is not something I should do if it is not God will for me. But I don’t know what He has to say about it because He hasn’t told me yet. So please pray that God gives me, and my husband, direction in this. *