I like the attitude of a lady I heard about last week.
In the large business she works for it was salary adjustment time. And some of her fellow-employees were not happy campers. The raises they were getting seemed too late in coming and too small when they got there. Some workers higher up on the pay scale were told they would receive no raises at all. A few actually got cut back to bring their earnings into line with others in their areas of expertise.
“We’re getting a raw deal!” one fellow yelped.
“Yeah,” others agreed. “They want us to work our tails off. Then they pinch pennies on our pay.”
The lady in question listened for awhile to the grousing of those who felt they weren’t being treated fairly. Then, although she was one of those who would be seeing a reduction on her paycheck, she silenced the office grinch mob when she replied with a smile, “Well, I’m not complaining. Never in my wildest moments did I dream that I would ever earn what they pay me today.”
I wonder how many of us could echo her statement. I surely could.
My first real preaching job, back while I was still in school, paid the handsome figure of $200 a month. And that may have been more than I was worth.
When I finished school, I doubled that money and tripled my work hours when I moved my little family a thousand miles west to begin full-time ministry. We survived that first year because we could buy ten pounds of potatoes for nineteen cents and a pound of pinto beans cost us a nickel. We raised our own veggies.
Those were “the good old days,” when we lived at least a paycheck behind all the time, dressed our kids in their cousins’ hand-me-downs, and had to spend every extra dollar that appeared to make some unexpected repair on our almost-used-up jalopy.
Remember those days? My tale can’t be that much different than hundreds that could be told by others. Most of us were happy back then, weren’t we? But who would want to go back and do it over again?
If I’m ever tempted to grumble about my income level today, all I have to do is remember those days three decades ago and I get over it. Like that good lady I started telling you about, I’m making more today than I ever thought possible. Far be it from me to complain.