GOD'S PROMISE OF BETTER DAYS

by Mariane Holbrook

In 1981, Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book, “When Bad Things

Happen To Good People” was breaking sales records all

across America.  So popular was the book that it became the

subject of many college courses and study groups and eventually

sold over 4 million copies.

For inquiring minds, an equally intriguing book could be written

 titled, “When Good Things Happen To Bad People.”

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, my parents had

every reason to ask the second question.  There were six children

to feed and Mother’s health was so poor that she spent much of the

time in bed, too ill from pernicious anemia to care for her family.

The final blow came when Daddy lost his job on the

Lehigh Valley Railroad. 

I was a newborn baby with a mother almost too weak to nurse me. 

My oldest sister said the strongest memory she had of me as an

infant was of my crying hour after hour from hunger pains

because there was so little milk.

If ever a couple had occasion to question God, it was my parents

at this time of their lives. They had established Christ as the head of

our home, were faithful tithers, yet were not spared the vagaries and

cruelties of the Depression that caused thousands to jump from

multi-storied building to their early deaths all across America.

Unable to pay his house payments, facing foreclosure and lacking

only $500 to pay off the mortgage, Daddy approached his older brother,

Irvin, about a loan.  Uncle Irvin held a position of prominence

at IBM and had not been impacted little if any by the Depression.

“Indeed not!” Uncle Irvin raged.  “If you hadn’t been giving money to

the church all these years you wouldn’t be in the financial straits you

are in now.

Without his aid, Mother and Daddy lost their home and we moved

into a rental property.

Hearing that story later as a young girl, I asked Mother why she and

Daddy weren’t bitter toward Uncle Irvin or worse, mad at God.

Mother had memorized a four-line poem that, along with her

unwavering faith and close walk with God, enabled her to look past

their present circumstances to a time when God would relieve their

economic stresses and give them financial stability:

“When I see the wicked prosper in their sinning
And the righteous dealt with many a cruel fate,
I remember this is only the beginning
And I whisper to my spirit, “Only wait.”  

Though they never owned a home, never drove a car, my parents

used their meager income to help six of their seven children through

college.  One became a banker.  Another a teacher. Two became

Christian missionaries to Africa and the Philippines, one became a

pastor’s wife, and two rose to the highest rungs of their corporate

ladders in business and finance.

My parents set a standard of Christian conduct for themselves that

their children strove hard to emulate.  We never heard them question

God.  We witnessed them reading their Bibles and praying regularly.

We never saw any evidence of envy or jealousy on their part.  They

stayed the course and never wavered in their faith.  Not even once.

But during their nearly fifty years of marriage before Daddy went on

to heaven, they were never blessed financially, either. They struggled

but they made it.  And accepting state or government assistance would

have been unthinkable to them.  They had purposely laid up their

treasures in heaven where neither thieves nor moths could corrupt.

One day, while sitting on the front porch with my father, we watched

my two young sons playing on the lawn.  Reaching over to hug me,

Daddy said with deep feeling, “I am the richest man in the world.

All our children are grown, are happy and doing well.  We are blessed.”

But not as blessed as their children were in having them for parents.