Possessions won't determine spiritual fortune

Billy Sunday started out as an American athlete, playing outfield in the National League in the 1880’s. He went on to become the most well-known and leading American evangelist in the first two decades of the 20th century. Billy Sunday once said: “The fellow that has no money is poor. The fellow that has nothing but money is poorer still.”

That statement would describe my great Uncle Ben. All the while Sunday was preaching, my great uncle Ben was living a life of gambling and greed.

Ben never married and lived strictly on the bare necessities. He could have afforded the best yet he just didn’t believe in spending any money. He believed in accumulating it.

After coming home from World War I, Ben cashed in all of his military paychecks and bought government bonds. He put the bonds in an old trunk, locked it and for years carried the key around his neck on a string. His collateral included land, nice brick homes, and acres of rich rice lands that he rented out to the farmers in the countryside.

Uncle Ben had dual vocations. He was a builder during the week and a barber on weekends. He ran the" OK Barber Shop” where he cut hair for 25 cents on weekends. After Ben reached 80, he gave up contracting and pushed his barber chair to the back of the building. He scratched out "barber shop" on his storefront sign and wrote over it "cafe." The sign then read "OK Cafe." There he sold beer and peanuts and he and his clientele gambled in the back room.

Anytime we would go and see Uncle Ben on our visits back home, it was out of obligation because he was my mother's uncle. At each visit, he gave us a pack of gum. His instructions were to split it between the four of us.

The year that America had faced the Cuban Missile Crisis, we dropped by his house to see Uncle Ben. Even after the crisis had passed, the talk of distrust toward the Russians and Castro was still evident among the people in the nation.

We went into his house, a ten room home, bare in furnishings and cold and bleak. We could barely see because of the 25-watt light bulb that hung from a long cord in the living room. Boxes were stacked everywhere and empty coffee cans, recycled as plant containers, were displayed with the remains of cuttings Ben had retrieved from the woods that surrounded his house. A pair of old boots, a cardboard box filled with decades of old receipts, a broom with much of the broomcorn missing, an array of fly swatters, and stacks of old newspapers cluttered the living room.

Ben was excited to show us an addition to his house that he had just completed. He had built what he called a “washhouse." We thought that unusual because he didn't even own a washing machine. The addition had a concrete floor, was partially in the ground and had cinder block walls two blocks thick. Uncle Ben claimed the addition was for laundry but his conversation was consumed with the threat of nuclear war and precautions to escape its damaging effects.

When we left his house that day, Mother and Daddy agreed: Ben had not built that extra room for a washing machine; he had built it out of fear and his attempts to control his own mortality. Mother and Daddy had talked to him on several occasions about his spiritual condition. His response was that he had no need for all that “religious stuff.” He could take care of things by himself. Now with the "washhouse," he had a man-made way to try and save himself. My parents thought that his washhouse was a visual sign of the impending storm that was brewing in his heart as he approached 85. Could he face death on his own?

Well we didn't have a nuclear war and several years later Uncle Ben died. He left a house with an array of worthless possessions and a bank account breaking seven figures.

We all must someday face our eternal destiny. Yet it is not our possessions that will determine our spiritual fortune. We can be rich materially and still be poor spiritually.

In the end, what really matters? Only Christ and his grace will save any of us. For my great Uncle Ben, he thought self-sufficiency could get him through anything. I just wonder how he has fared in eternity.

Judy Brandon is a Clovis resident. Contact her at:

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