Dirty Soap

When I was a young teenager, (seems a lifetime ago!) I purchased a cake of soap. Nothing unusual about that you might think…. But this soap was bought from a novelty shop, and it was soap that did the opposite to what soap is designed to do, when the user tried to wash with it, the soap made them dirtier than before they started …

My mother was the first to discover this little oddity and to say that she was not impressed would be an understatement! After I told her that I was responsible for this (I think that she had already worked that out) her innate sense of fun rose to the surface, and she went along with the prank. My elder sister and brother were both caught out, but we never managed to trick Dad. (I suspect that Mother warned him) My younger brother and sister were too young to enjoy the prank, but I did pull other stunts over the years, and occasionally still do.

Most of us like to present an outwardly clean appearance, even when our spirits are unclean, and most of us “judge” another’s outward appearance as the condition of the inner person.

In 2008, an English pastor dressed very shabbily, disguised himself, and sat outside his church waiting for the doors to open for Sunday service. He looked (and probably smelt) like a homeless “street person”. No one invited him to the church; most people simply looked the other way and pretended not to see him. After the service started, he ambled inside and sat in the seat reserved for the minister. This, as can be imagined, caused a stir! One of the elders approached the vagrant, and asked him to leave. The “vagrant” refused. Before the situation got out of control, the pastor removed his disguise, and went and took his customary place behind the pulpit.

As he looked out over the now chastened congregation, he said “Today’s sermon will be taken from Jesus’ words in the 19^th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, verse 21.”

“Jesus said to him, If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in Heaven. And come, follow Me.”

Throughout the gospels Jesus’ concern for the poor, the homeless and the rejects of society is evident. While He acknowledges that they will always be with us, He makes it clear to us that we have considerable responsibility towards them. Sadly, in many of our western countries, “Social Welfare” i.e. government responsibility, has replaced true Christian welfare.

An Amish bishop was quoted in “The Economist” as saying “Prosperity has often been fatal to Christianity, but persecution never.”
 

A lady who should know about soap did one thing all her life: laundry. Oseola McCarty, who died in 1999 was famous for it--or at least for what she did with her profits. For decades, Miss McCarty earned 50 cents per load doing laundry for the well-to-do families of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, preferring a washboard over an electric washing machine.

Every week, she put a little bit of her earnings in a savings account. When she finally retired, she asked her banker how much money she had socked away. “$250, 000” was his reply. She was in shock. “I had more than I could use in the bank,” she explained. “I can’t carry anything away from here with me, so I thought it was best to give it to some child to get an education.” This shy, never-married laundry woman gave $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi to help African-American young people attend college. “It’s more blessed to give than to receive,” she told reporters. “I’ve tried it.”

Have you? 

Original "tramp" story here.