Coins for the Lord
by Artel Ricks
 

When I was about five or six years old, I sat at the dinner table with my large family and listened as the others discussed tithing.  They told me that tithing is one-tenth of all we earn and that it is paid to the Lord by those who love Him.  After dinner I got out the small amount of money I had saved and figured what I owed the Lord as tithing.  I then went to the only room in the house with a lock on the door-the bathroom-and there knelt by the bathtub.  Holding the three or four coins in my upturned hands, I asked the Lord to accept them-certain that He would do so.  I pleaded with the Lord for some time, but the money remained in my hands.  No little boy could have felt more rejected than I did.  The Lord had accepted tithing from my parents and from all of my older brothers.  Why not from me?  As I rose from my knees, I felt so unworthy that I could not tell anyone what had happened.  Only the Lord knew.
 

A few days later at Primary, the teacher said she felt impressed to talk about something that was not in the lesson.  I sat amazed as she then taught us how to pay tithing.  But what I learned was far more important than how to pay tithing.  I learned that the Lord had heard and answered my prayer, that He loved me, and that I was important to Him.  In later years I came to appreciate still another lesson my Primary teacher had taught me that day-to teach as prompted by the Spirit.
 

So tender was the memory of that occasion that for more than thirty years I could not share it.  Even today, after sixty years, I still find it difficult to tell about it without tears coming to my eyes.  The pity is that a wonderful teacher never knew that through her, the Lord spoke to a small boy.