Vanity

My days are numbered
Rid me of vanity, O God.

Money

Money

“You've got to read his book---Gifted Hands,” the pastor said. “His story amazes me, how a young black mother here in America was able to raise two black boys into fine citizens, one of them in particular...." I sat in church and listened. I wondered a bit---why this man's story was a major fixture of the sermon today.

The day was a sunday, at Salvation Center, and the Preacher was Pastor Doyin Oke. He'd recently read the book by renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson.

I thought of the story a while, trying to measure it's weight. I spent a few minutes, and simply left it to lie. 

And then I found myself wandering the isles of the Barnes and Noble bookstore at the Arboretum here in Austin, and the book showed up, and it beckoned: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. Is this not the very book the pastor talked about? I thought. Yeah, it is. Well, let's see what's in here.

I read it a bit---not bad, I thought, after a few pages. But I kept reading, and reading, and the clock struck 10pm, closing time for the bookstore. I had to leave. I could not put the book down. Either buy it or put it back on the rack---I had to decide. I bought it, and left.

Here is an excerpt from his days at the University of Yale...in his own words.

Money

Lack of money constantly troubled me during my college years. But two experiences during my studies at Yale reminded me that God cared and would always provide for my needs.

First, during my sophomore year I had very little money. And then all of a sudden, I had absolutely no money---not even enough to ride the bus back and forth to church. No matter how I viewed the situation, I had no prospects of anything coming in for at least a couple of weeks.

That day I walked across the campus alone, bewailing my situation, tired of never having enough money to buy the everyday things I needed; the simple things like toothpaste or stamps.”Lord,” I prayed, please help me. At least give me bus fare to go to church.”

Although I'd been walking aimlessly, I looked up and realized I was just outside Battell Chapel on the old campus. As I approached the bike racks, I looked down. A ten dollar bill lay crumpled on the ground three feet in front of me.

“Thank You, God,” I said as I picked it up, hardly able to believe that I had the money in my hand.

The following I hit that same low point again---not one cent on me, and no expectations for getting any. Naturally I walked across campus all the way to the chapel, searching for a ten dollar bill. I found none.

Lack of funds wasn't my only worry that day, however. The day before I'd been informed that the final examination papers in a psychology class, Perceptions 301, “were inadvertently burned.” I'd taken the exam two days earlier but, with the other students, would have to repeat the test.

And so I, with about 150 other students, went to the designated auditorium for the repeat exam.

As soon as we received the tests, the professor walked out of the classroom. Before I had a chance to read the first question, I heard a loud groan behind me.

“Are they kidding?” someone whispered loudly.

As I stared at the questions, I couldn't believe them either. They were incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Each of them contained a thread of what we should have known from the course, but they were so intricate that I figured a brilliant psychiatrist might have trouble with some of them.

“Forget it,” I heard one girl say to another. “Let's go back and study this. We can say we didn't read the notice. Then when they repeat it, we'll be ready.” Her friend agreed, and they quietly slipped out of the auditorium.

Immediately three others packed away their paper. Others filtered out. Within ten minutes after the exam started, we were down to roughly one hundred. Soon half the class was gone, and the exodus continued. Not one person turned in the examination before leaving.

I kept working away, thinking all the time, How can they expect us to know this stuff? Pausing then to look around, I counted seven students besides me still going over the test.

Within half an hour from the time the examination began, I was the only student left in the room. Like the others, I was tempted to walk out, bu I had read the notice, and I couldn't like and say I hadn't. All the time I wrote my answers, I prayed to God to help me figure out what to put down. I paid more no more attention to departing footsteps.

Suddenly the door of the classroom opened noisily, disrupting my flow of thought. As I turned, my gaze met that of the professor. At the same time I realized no one else was still struggling over the questions. The professor toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“A hoax, a fake,” the teacher said. “We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.” She smiled again. “And that's you.”

The professor then did something even better. She handed me a ten-dollar bill.