The History of the
Offering Plate Quotes
Once upon a time, many, many moons
ago ... it was the end of 1997 or the beginning of 1998 ... I was in a
group at church along with a woman named Phyllis who told me
that she had to count the money in the offering plates each week and how
very boring it was! I had not yet joined the church and, hoping to make
Phyllis's job a little more interesting, I began to put slips of paper
into an anonymous envelope with my offering that
had quotations I found interesting on them.
Weeks passed, and Phyllis mentioned
in our group that someone was putting quotations in the offering plate and
she had plotted with the ushers to try to figure out who it was. More
weeks passed and she said she was narrowing it down. She knew that the
person sat on the left side of the church and she thought she would figure it
out soon. Finally,
she did! No one else knew I was doing it, so she really had to be quite a
sleuth to figure it out.
Some time later, Phyllis moved
away from Evergreen but I was really enjoying doing the quotations and
continued. In fact, I began sending them to some of you. Nothing
elaborate, just the quotations and sometimes a gif.
Baby Brother (Jack) made a website
for them and we tried to gather as many previous ones as we could but we still
missed out on two year's worth. I began adding pictures that were fun or
pretty or interesting. Soon, I started adding Biblical paintings by the
old masters that illustrated some passage from that week's Lectionary, or Bible
reading. I began using the Lectionary themes for the week as my way of
preparing for the Sunday service.
In 2003, Dottie and Jack sent me a
digital camera and I slowly began adding pictorial observations of
things that had occurred during the week. Yes, sometimes I get
carried away!
Next, I added actual Bible passages
from the Lectionary and, somewhere in there, I often included a theme or
title.
All this has developed because, ten
years ago, a woman named Phyllis had complained about counting the money in the
offering plates. I often wished I could have told Phyllis about
how it had all evolved.
Today, at the Evergreen Life Care Nursing Home, we had a
new resident who came to our Memories in the Making painting group.
It was Phyllis. Unfortunately, I think it may be too late to
tell Phyllis about the evolution of the Offering Plate Quotes.
August 31, 2007