Render Unto Caesar That Which is Caesar's

And unto God, that which is God's. It's Sunday morning, and I am sitting at my kitchen table paying bills. I'm also sorting paperwork in preparation for doing income tax, and I'm setting up a ledger page on which to record my expenses for this month. (It's almost the middle of the month, but I don't care, I've kept all my receipts, and they are about to take over the kitchen table.) This verse from the Bible flits through my brain, and along with it, memories of my dad.

In my childhood, I would most definitely have been at Sunday School, followed by sitting through church. My father would be singing in the choir, and frequently reading the New or Old Testament lesson and occasionally preaching the sermon. It may seem like a great leap to go from bill-paying to thinking about church and my dad, but somewhere in between, I was thinking about how the previous Sunday I had been in church with Todd, Sarah and Ella, listening to Ben preach the sermon. So my brain is putting all this together and thinking how odd it is to be dealing with my finances on Sunday, but truthfully, it's often the day that I pay bills and make sure my checkbook is up to date, and these days, it's a rare occasion to be in church.

So in the process of ruminating (what a great word!!) over this mishmash of ideas, I also recall a sermon my dad gave in the Laconia UCC church when I was a grown-up, and had travelled down from Littleton to hear him preach. His sermon focused on world hunger, and he was, i believe, helping the church conference carry out a massive campaign to raise money to go toward alleviating world hunger. His prop for the sermon was, appropriately, a brown grocery bag from the I.G.A. which was the market where he and my mom shopped. I don't recall the specifics of the sermon, but according to dad on that morning, those initials stood for "In God's Arms." I think the gist of it was that we were all "In God's Arms," and we all needed to help the less fortunate fill their grocery bags by making a generous contribution to the offering plate.

I further thought of how proud dad would have been to sit and listen to Ben preach, and how he would have grilled him afterward and probably would have made some suggestions for things he might have done differently. Dad was like that. It usually seemed to me that whatever I had just done (given a speech, performed in play, etc.) it was never quite good enough, and dad had some "suggestions" to make. Oh well, I'd rather not go there in this blog entry.

All of this is also connected to dad in that he and my mom kept track on a ledger pad of every penny they spent, for all the years they lived in NH until they moved to Langdon Place, when dad was no longer capable of handling the finances. I have resisted doing that religiously, and only did it once (under coercion from dad) when I divorced Bob Whitten and wasn't sure I was going to have enough money to pay all the bills. I did have enough money, and after a few months, I stopped recording. This year I'm taking it up again (probably for a short time) only to track where I spend money, so I can more accurately craft a budget for myself. I found such mundane lists among my great grandmother's letters, and I know it's been a family tradition, therefore, from the 1860s to the present. And, I know that the effect of writing down every cent you spend is to curtail your spending. You have to face yourself when you write down what you spent and what you spent it on. Carrying out this record-keeping will, I hope, help me to render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's and render unto God, that which is God's. No matter what I discover, I am reassured by my long ago memory of my dad, that I will be able to continue to fill my grocery bags, because I am "In God's Arms," which is where, I am sure, he is now as well.