Posted by Another answer on March 20, 2005 at 16:55:35
In Reply to: Re: A different answer posted by Monika Kosz on March 20, 2005 at 05:43:26:
This one became a letter and was told many times. About a crippled boy in a tenement bldg. or something, who lived upstairs and would throw pieces of paper with bible verses or something down onto the sidewalk and writing them was excrutiatingly painful and tedious and...I forgot the rest.
Also there was a story about a missionary named Pandita that was old and wandered up to villages faithful to climb mts to reach the farthest corners of the earth in spite of age and hardship.
Many stories like this related that idea of "burning the candle at both ends" or, in other words, give up your life for the work and pay no attention to self. And don't complain because look what these people did in spite of their hardships.
The moral of the story being have no life of your own, sacrifice regardless of pain and how could you gripe about your problems when poor ole Tommy and Pandita worked so hard and tirelessly regardless of hardship.
This would fit with signs that used to be posted on walls when I first encountered "Children of God" aka "The Family", now the Family International.
One sign said "I complained when I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet".
During this time food was poor, clothes were hand me downs and "dumpster diving" was one of the main sources for meals. Dumpster diving meant going in back of large grocery stores and getting outdated or partially spoiled foods out of the garbage dumpsters.
I can remember cutting green areas off of meat.. and eating partially melted ice cream that had re-frozen, and taking spoiled lettuce out of discarded packaged sandwiches and then putting them back together..