Where Our Treasure Is

I never expected one of the most poignant moments of my year to involve a battered cardboard box. After what had been a long odyssey of travel, canceled flights, and delayed luggage, I was enraptured in a joyous Quaker worship service in South Africa led by Friends from Kenya. Friends sang spirited hymns in Kiswahili. English and Spanish translations were available in a songbook put together especially for the event, which I glanced at as I hummed along to the melodies and swayed in praise. At the World Plenary Meeting, all-together worship services were led each day by Friends from a different part of the world in the manner of their Quaker tradition.

An offering was an integral part of this particular worship. As in many places around the world, housing insecurity is a pressing problem in the Johannesburg area, so the Friends leading worship called for us to participate in an offering to benefit local people experiencing homelessness. That’s when I saw our box.

Before I had left home in Philadelphia for the 48+ hour journey to South Africa, I had stuffed that box with nearly a hundred copies of Friends Journal issues from the past year. Much later, when the box and I were reunited on the ground half a world away, I found no shortage of takers for these magazines, which I gave away to those Friends in attendance. And to my delight, our beat-up Friends Journal box had a most useful second life. It came my way, this time, passed from hand to hand and filled with banknotes from all over the world. Dollars, euros, South African Rands, in all colors of the rainbow. I smiled and tossed in a red 200-rand note with Nelson Mandela’s visage on the front and a pair of leopards on the back.

It was evident to me that morning that sharing what we have, when we can, in accordance with our beliefs, must be a Quaker Testimony, with a capital T. In this issue of Friends Journal, we further explore how Friends see money and community, from perspectives nearly as diverse as we Friends are, ourselves. Henri Nouwen, inspired by Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, wrote that God’s beloved community “is the place of abundance where every generous act overflows its original bounds and becomes part of the unbounded grace of God at work in the world.”

Blessings to you, dear reader, in this new year, one sure to be full of challenging moments. May we all join together in that unbounded grace of God at work in the world.