Charity – The pure love of Christ

May 6, 2012

In my youth the word charity had a very negative connotation. It was a well-founded understanding that we did not accept “charity”, and we didn’t. We did a lot of family clothes swaps, growing our own food and doing without because we didn’t want to be beholden to anyone; partly from being prideful; partly from not understanding true charity and its blessing on the giver and the recipient. After we moved to the Salt River Valley, my mother would stay in town and my father would go up to the ranch. There is a saying among ranchers that if they had a million dollars, they would, “. . .just ranch til it was all gone.” Dad would go to the ranch at Cordes Junction, Arizona and do all things necessary to maintain water, fences, feed, pasturing, etc, and mother would keep us in town going to school. Dad bought apartments in Scottsdale, Arizona so we lived at the apartments. Mother used the money from the coin washing machines to get whatever we needed to purchase in the way of personal goods and the apartment rents to pay the mortgage, electricity, water, food, etc. Insurance? Well, no one ever really thought of it back then. We had liability and fire insurance and we must have had some kind of auto insurance, but certainly nothing like health insurance. We lived, grew, enjoyed, and tripped up through our teens. My friend Ted Day’s father said that we “grew us pretty steady by jerks”. (remember that Ted)

I watch, today, as families try to cope with the dangerous evils in the world and marvel at their ability to do so. My mother would say, emphatically, that she had no idea how they would have raised the four of us siblings, had it not been for the Church. We recently visited Utah County so Jean could go to LDS Women’s Conference with our daughters - Diane and Kaye. We watched as each family balanced work, home, church social life, and athletic experiences. It was dizzying to watch, much less to attempt replication. Yesterday, two very busy moms and dads with all kinds of personal responsibilities left on the back burner came over and helped us do things we simply could not do.  They hung pictures, cleaned carpets, moved furniture, and fixed our television so it is much clearer. After they got through they invited us to a Cinco de Mayo and we all enjoyed a wonderful round of playing with beautiful children, eating, and telling dumbo jokes. They didn’t have to do this. They did it because they understand the nature of our purpose on this earth.

A contemporary phrase coming from a movie, “Play it Forward” has kept me thinking nonstop for the last couple of years. My bride, Jean and I have been through some really interesting medical trials over the past five years, but now we are ready to “Play it forward.” We want to help others by doing whatever Heavenly Father would like us to do. Teresa (Dan’s wife) Jacobs shared the name of an internet academy (Khan Academy.org) with me this week. I have put out a challenge to some of my most frontier-like friends and family suggesting that we need to make things happen. I just don’t quite know what “it” is yet. Don’t be shy. Share with me. Will it be putting together a school that will assist individuals who are unable to survive in traditional settings? Will it be an occupational/business development academy through which we may be able to assist those coming out of the military, out of prison, and out of personal tragedies? Will it be something that will bless the lives of some who have lost their jobs and not been able to recover financially?

We are all prompted daily by God and the Holy Ghost. We need to listen, understand, and then act on those promptings.

God bless each of you as you complete the daily tasks in your lifes.

Duane Jacobs, Popsa, Grandpa, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend