Need Poverty to Make You Happy?

 

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[NARRATOR]

The subject matter contained in this presentation is based on Biblical principles and designed to give you accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that neither the presenter nor the broadcaster is engaged to render legal, accounting, or other professional advice. Since your situation is fact-dependent, you may wish to additionally seek the services of an appropriately licensed legal, accounting, real estate, or investment professional.

“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life– what you shall eat or drink– or about your body– what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

“Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap. They gather nothing into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you, by worrying, add a single moment to your life span?

“Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wildflowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will He not much more provide for you, oh you of little faith?

“So do not worry and say, what are we to eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what are we to wear? All these things the pagans seek. Your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

“But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”

This is Mejanomics with a Friend of Medjugorje.

[ANNOUNCER]

Welcome to Mejanomics with a Friend of Medjugorje.

As we get closer to the day of Christmas, and we are in the midst of The Nine Days Before Christmas Novena right now, those of you who are praying it with us all over the world, we are united with you in prayer.

Those of you who have not joined it yet, a Friend of Medjugorje has made that novena available on Mej.com, free of charge. You just go right to the homepage.

There is a big banner there. All of the prayers and daily meditations, everything you need for each day is right there on the homepage of Medjugorje.com.

That novena was very spur of the moment. A Friend of Medjugorje essentially stepped into the studio every day for the nine days before Christmas ten years ago, actually, 2014 and everyday was sort of not planned.

He did everything spontaneous and since then that novena has become the single most popular Medjugorje themed Christmas novena in the entire world.

And so, you are invited to join in with the many thousands across the world that are a part of this novena.

Tonight’s broadcast is a special broadcast. We are going to share with you a broadcast from December the 23^rd two thousand and ten.

That’s 14 years ago. This is the same year that a Friend of Medjugorje wrote the book, It Ain’t Gonna Happen. The title of this broadcast was “Need Poverty to Make You Happy?”

A Friend of Medjugorje shares a remarkable story and through that story he communicates his understanding of the world and what it is that Our Lady is doing and Her Medjugorje apparitions and its incredible to hear what he is saying because, again, like we have said countless times before, it is as if it could have been said today. That’s how prophetic it is.

So we begin this broadcast with a Friend of Medjugorje, December the 23^rd, two thousand and ten.

[A FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Can’t wait ‘til the 25^th. That is the saying everybody uses in Medjugorje.

And obviously that is tied to Christmas and the village became habited in saying this throughout the decades and maybe even centuries.

That when something was coming up, it could be in the middle of June, or it could be in the middle of October.

And it could have been October 14^th, but they knew it was a big celebration of some big thing or a big wedding or whatever it was, and they would say to each other as they passed, “Can’t wait til the 25^th.”

It became a greeting.

Of course, we know what happened June 25, 1981, actually the 24^th, but the 25^th came and that is the official day Our Lady even said, “I want my anniversary to be on this day,” not the eve, but it shows the eve’s are important.

Of course, that “eve” was the Feast of John the Baptist, which was preceded by the coming of the Messiah, so all this is wedded into just Christmas.

In fact, when Our Lady came here in 1988, with Marija and stayed with us for three months and had all the apparitions and tens of thousands of conversions, it was around the whole joyful mysteries.

We actually had that play out. Maybe we will talk about that on the 25^th, “Can’t wait ‘til the 25th, huh?”

Well, we’re going to start. This is Mejanomics.

It’s about economics and of course, now everybody is outside doing everything, hustling and bustling and spending a lot of money.

Much of it on what they shouldn’t be spending it on. But Joan’s got a story and it’s rather long, but it is appropriate for this season and we’ll comment after that.

So Joan, why don’t you get started with your story of the week.

[JOAN]

THE LAST BEST GIFT

It was my 12^th Christmas and school had finally let out for the holidays. The kids on the bus were bouncing and laughing, showing off trinkets from class parties.

When we got off at our stop, though, all joy drove away with our schoolmates, leaving us in a cloud of smelly exhaust on the long empty road.

We turned toward home to walk in single file silence.

Five skinny, blond-haired, blue-eyed look alike kids. Bits of wood, flicked, as Roddy, the oldest, whittled away at a little wooden war plane.

Len, the youngest, stretched his stride to match Roddy’s footprints. I watched Len’s saddened shoelaces flapping and frayed.

Our sisters, Lis and Ellie, lagged behind as we slogged through the slush to face our first Christmas without Dad.

It was 1946. My friend, Quinn’s Dad, had died in the war and the Lady’s Society had brought special things for his family’s Christmas.

But not for our Dad. And not for our family.

In a way, though, it was the end of the war that killed him. He lost his job as custodian with the Baxter Armor Hospital closed.

After that, between his carpentry and our little go-broke farm, Mom said he just worked too hard and worried too much.

We all stood there after the ambulance drove away, watching the snow whip across the porch light, feeling as bleak and hollow as that endless January night.

Then our own little war began. Survival.

Come Spring, Mom sold the farm, and we moved to five acres and an old one-room schoolhouse.

We slept in an army tent, worked on neighbouring farms and spent every spare hour adding a kitchen and two bedrooms to the building.

Now the lights of our little house beaconed in the early dusk of Washington winter.

As we threw open the door and stopped the slush from our feet, Mom called. “There’s a surprise when your chores are done.”

Coming back from milking, I saw it. Propped behind the house, the most enormous Christmas Tree ever.

We didn’t question how it got there. Roddy and I wrestled it through the door.

Its sharp fragrance penetrated our lungs as we nailed boards on and stood it up.

Mom quietly fingered its deep, green needles, which glistened from the melt of light fallen snow. Our eyes feasted on it.

Its spikes scrapped the ceiling, and the branches almost blocked the doors to the bedrooms.

Best of all, it crowded out the gloom that had followed us home.

Len ran in circles whooping with delight. Ellie begged, “Can we decorate tonight?”  Mom nodded, “If you can find the ornaments.”

Ellie grabbed her coat from the school hooks by the door and dashed out with the flashlight, Len, close behind.

“Try the big shed,” Mom called, “and tie those shoes, Len.”

The old farmhouse had been doubled the size of this little place, and we hadn’t gotten rid of a thing.

The two sheds and the old tent were pretty jam packed and the house, with its abundance of cubby holes, was crammed. Everything was there, somewhere, but we could never find what we wanted when we needed it.

Except for Dad’s old carpentry tools, which I carefully oiled and hung in the smaller shed.

I had a few tools of my own, one of which I’d found on the road last summer, a beautiful screwdriver with an oversized handle of inlaid wood.

Dad would have liked it. His tools were just about all he’d left to us.

Those and three end rolls of paper he brought home way back when he was custodian at Sunset McCay Sales Book Company.

Dad was supposed to toss them into the furnace to heat the building, but he just couldn’t see burning a thing before it’s best use was realized.

They stood propped in the corner of the living room, two rolls of tissue paper and one heavier, good enough to draw on.
 

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I think, until that moment, we’d been saving them, as if holding onto a piece of Dad himself.

Lis dragged out the heavy one. “Let’s make a banner, Rich.” We cut a piece from the roll and smoothed it across the floor.

As Lis poked through the stubs, she asked Mom, “Did you finish your Christmas sweater?”

“Um, hum,” Mom smiled as she rocked and nodded.  Somebody had given her the yarn and she’d been knitting every night for a month.

We kids tried not to bicker and helped each other with homework so as not to interrupt her.

With Mom’s new job on top of everything else, that Christmas sweater was the first thing she’d done just for herself since Dad had died.

Roddy joined the little kids in hunting for the decorations and then we unpacked our memories.

The tin carousel that turned in the heat of its candles. The old glass ornaments from Norway.

The wooden creche Dad had carved for us kids to paint.

Faded paper Santas from each child’s kindergarten and miles of crinkled tinsel and tangled lights.

It was the next day, Christmas Eve, before the last piece of tinsel went on.

We fed more wood to the shiny porcelain heat-a-lator and the room took on a glow all its own.

“Let’s eat supper by the tree,” Lis suggested.

“Like a picnic,” Ellie chimed in.

And we did. Hot dogs, macaroni and green beans with hard-boiled eggs from our own chickens, milk from our own cow and ginger cookies we had all helped drizzle sugar frosting on.

It took forever for me to fall asleep.

Roddy, next to me, didn’t move a muscle after pulling up the quilts, but I could tell by his breathing that he was awake too.

Len arranged the covers several times but none of us spoke.

Away from the warmth of the big room, the cold emptiness of Dad’s absence enveloped us.

He should have been tucking us in and closing the door with his traditional Christmas admonition, “You stay out of Santa’s way, now, and no peeking.”

Nobody had even mentioned hanging stockings.

We all knew things were bad and we’d only get one small present from Santa.

We all knew.

But we weren’t prepared for just how small that pile of presents would appear under that great, huge tree when we crept out of our bedrooms in the morning.

The puddle under Mom’s boots told us that she’d already done our chores.

Ellie, Lis, Len and I all scrunched on the couch and sat straight as pokers with our hands folded.

The bentwood rocker creaked as Mom lowered herself into it. She pulled the hem of Dad’s old blue corduroy robe around her ankles.

I thought I saw tears in her eyes, but I wasn’t sure.

“I’ll stoke the fire again,” Roddy said. I think he was more intent on prolonging the gift opening then warming the room.

We all waited, trying not to stare at the base of the tree. I wished we kids hadn’t drawn names.

Len’s feet began to bounce in impatience. “Let Rich open my present first,” he said, as Roddy to his place in the olive green overstuffed chair, Dad’s chair.

Everybody said Len looked the most like Dad. But Roddy turned to Len with Dad’s eyes and Dad’s tone, “Hold your horses, sonny.”

Dad had always started at the bottom of the pile so the first gift would be a surprise, but this pile was a single layer.

So, Roddy did the next best thing. He stirred them around with his hand to choose the first at random.

“Let’s see here.” He turned the tag to read it.

For each gift he stirred and drew and slowly read the tag, but no matter how he tried to make it last, those presents were opened in no time at all and we sat, each with two gifts in our hands.

I held a paper ornament Len had made at school and a little pickup truck, real metal with a red cab and a green box.

Lis got up first. She placed her gifts on her spot. “Don’t anybody sit on these,” and she knelt to look under the couch.

Her bathrobe sleeve jammed way up as she stretched her arm underneath.

I couldn’t tell what she pulled out, even though she was mere feet from me.

Ellie, who had a better view, got a funny look on her face. Then she too scooted off the cushion and left her presents behind to dig through the pile of mittens by the hooks.

Then Lis, hauled one of Dad’s old tissue paper rolls into the girl’s room.

Suddenly, it must have been magic, because I don’t know how we knew, we were all looking for things.

Under furniture, behind boxes and in cubby holes, secreting what we found into the pockets and folds of our robes.

The second giant roll of tissue paper went to our bedroom and scissors and tape were passed back and forth as we hid what we were wrapping from the other.

With new gifts piled under the tree, we took our places again, not quite so poker-straight this time.

And Roddy handed them around. I unwrapped my long-lost penny whistle.

Ellie hugged her missing baby doll. Mom had a matched pair of gloves again.

We kept it up all morning. We got dressed and searched the tent and shed finding things, wrapping them, ripping them open again.

We threw the paper every which way, bounced lost balls, tried on missing hats, played jacks. We got sillier and sillier.

We even sneaked into each other’s drawers and wrapped things that hadn’t been lost at all.

Somewhere in there, Mom put cranberries onto to boil and a chicken in the oven. The aroma rose, filling the house. So did the mountain of crumpled tissue paper.

We had to wade through it to get to get to the kitchen when she called us to eat, while the last set of gifts waited under the tree.

After dinner, I never felt so full.

Not just of food but of fun, of pure joy and anticipation. I could hardly wait for the others to open what I had for them.

This last pile had more gifts than all the others.

Roddy drew the nearest first and handed it to me. It was small, but heavy.

This scrawl read, “To Rich from Roddy.” My heart quickened, but I opened it slowly. “Your best knife,” I whispered. I was afraid I might cry.

The most magnificent magic had just begun. For this time, we each sought gifts for the others from among our own treasures.

My heart about burst watching Roddy open my screwdriver with the inlaid handle.

Liz and Ellie ended up with each other’s favorite dolls.

I don’t remember it all, but Len got two from everybody because we each gave him our shoelaces.
 

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As we sat amidst our bounty, eating Baby Jesus’ birthday cake, Liz asked, “Why aren’t you wearing your new sweater, Mom, your new Christmas sweater?”

Mom eyes sparkled as she raised her eyebrows and said, “Maybe we’re all wearing it. Maybe the whole room is wearing it.”

She rocked back and forth in the old bentwood rocker. Her face glowing in the light of the splendid tree.

Roddy’s jaw dropped. You could hear him suck in his breath. “What?” said Lis.

“She traded it,” Roddy said quietly, “for the tree.”

All eyes turned to Mom. “I couldn’t have done it without all of you,” Mom said.

“Don’t you remember being extra good so that I could finish on time?”

This time she didn’t stop the tears in her eyes as we gathered around, hugging her all at once.

And Dad was right there with us.

In Len’s face and Roddy’s eyes, in the old blue robe, in the tradition and ornaments and in that grand mound of tissue paper that had wrapped our Christmas and taught us the best use of things.

We hugged Mom until her chair almost rocked right over.

Then we jumped and played in the paper like a pile of leaves.

Finally, handfuls at a time, we wadded it up tight and tossed it into the shiny porcelain heater, watching the flames and feeling the warmth, one wad at a time, until they were gone.

It was my father’s last best gift.

[A FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Well, what is poverty? What do we understand about being poor?

One who is poor who lacks the necessity to live.

And so, it is Our Lady who comes and tells us that “I am bringing you into a new time when you will get to know God more.”

In The Poem of the Man-God, there is one point where Jesus talks about parents, when they die, they can do more from Heaven then they can do upon the earth.

The true story of this person who said this, wrote this story, that really happened in their life, was one of the most joyous Christmas’ they had, and yet there was a big void there.

And so, we have to look at the culture, we have to look at the direction we are going, we have to look at where Our Lady is leading us to, that a mother and what kind of sweater she prepares for us.

What is she trading her time in for, to gain us. There is a book that was written about the great depression in 1929 called, We Had Everything But Money.

These people lost, seemingly, everything. Moved into an army tent, moved into a one-room schoolhouse and yet, we’ve got to understand that is poverty.

I tell you what’s poverty is spiritual poverty, that’s what we suffer from today.

A benefit mentality, that we’re owed something.

People are rioting in Europe because their tuition is going up.

They have no concept, not any concept at all about where we are, what is our condition, and why our blessings that we’ve taken for granted and learned to love that rather than who gave the blessing is going to go away.

So, we’re ungrateful people. We are an ungrateful world.

Our Lady has come just to show us that. What is a true gift?

Gift is peace. Gift is joy and this family experienced a contradiction of the way the world thinks today.

Joy amidst of not having anything. Real happiness. We see traces in our community.

Our kids right now are making everything for Christmas. They are working until two or three o’clock in the morning just carving stuff out of wood, making different things out of metal.

Every present comes from here that they are making for their parents and for each other is made.

My son just showed me something incredible the made because somebody had visited here and said he didn’t have any talent.

You wouldn’t believe what he made. It’s unbelievable, out of wood.

And so that brings esteem. That brings joy. It brings peace.

It means working with God the Creator. It means working with what God gave to us.

This story really emulates, really what I believe what Our Lady has for us in the future.

Seeing this season what we lose, and everybody is just mimicking the same thing we’ve gone because we keep going down this railway track and it has no reverse and no turn.

And we’ve got the opportunity and the time of invitation to reverse that.

And it is very difficult to do that.

No great ship in the ocean can turn around on a dime.

It takes miles for it to make a turn. Sometimes I think some I’ve read ten miles to make a turn.

Our Lady, with Her messages, has given us the ability to do that.

It doesn’t mean it’s easy. But we are in the time of grace, the time of invitation where we can do that.

A large portion, not a large portion, the main portion, the main driving rudder, is economics.

People have to change the way the way they live to change their direction.

Go more simple.

These people went from a farm to five acres. You can make it on five acres, but what moved with them was the cow, the chicken and they were still happy.

They were still able to provide for themselves.

We need to be really reflecting very strong, especially in this season, this Christmas, this winter of what has happened in these past few months, and years and how our government is reckless right now in what it is doing.

Totally mindless and with no thought and that we’ve got an economy built on debt. A total insane proposition.

To make this economy work, we’ve got to go borrow money. Just the opposite.

Whatever the media says, what other financial experts say, do just the opposite.

Because they’ve got us in this mess to start with. What God provides you can do, what He doesn’t provide, don’t do it.

We run the mission this way. We run our lives this way. And it’s the way Our Lady has shown.

[ANNOUNCER]

So, you have been listening to a Friend of Medjugorje from December the 23^rd two thousand and ten, the title of this broadcast is “Need Poverty to be Happy?”

At this point in the broadcast, a Friend of Medjugorje begins to shift, and he speaks about the book, It Aint Gonna Happen.

December 2010, the book had been released in June, so just six months previous is when the book was released.

So, he is going to give some, some statistics, if you will, about the effect that the book is having upon people and it’s remarkable to hear how his book took off like a wildfire across the world, changing people, the way they think.

He will speak a little bit about that right now.

[A FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

And that is the purpose of this show, what is your information source, where are you getting your information.

From those learned, those experts who have made and created this situation, who “Pied Pipered” you right to the edge of the cliff that you are about to fall into the ocean, just like the pigs who were possessed?

We’ve got a possessed system.

Our Lady comes every day to exorcise that system. And if your information sources are changed, which She is trying to do.

“Listen to me,” She says. “You listen to me, I will guide you,” She says.

She says you are on the wrong path. She says change your direction.

She’s your information source. Read the Bible. What does the Church tell you?

What are Her messages tell you? When you follow that, then you will start doing what people are doing listening to this show.

Since June, It Ain’t Gonna Happen launched the Miraculous Medal Medjugorje round.

Just since June the people who start changing their information source, following and looking at what Our Lady saying, looking at the economic situation, the stock markets, where the investments are and those who have money and those who have very little all them changed to their direction being the messages have bought 12 million dollars’ worth of silver, of the Miraculous Medal [Medjugorje round].
 

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Can you imagine? About 480,000 rounds, going on a half a million of these Miraculous Medals one ounce silver pieces.

Why is that? That is the question I want you to answer to me to everybody out there.

And if you’ve done it and you lean toward that and you want to do it and change and down-size it’s because you changed your information source.

As long as you think the stock market is it, real estate’s it, all our proper things that has gotten us to this dead end, that we can resurrect this stuff, it ain’t gonna happen.

It simply is not going to happen.

It is just basic common reasoning. Isaiah says come reason with me, says the Lord.

If you do that, you won’t stay where you are. You are not going to continue doing the things you are doing.

And we see the people that when they hear the show, when they read the book, it is easy for them.

In fact, the people that has got the bigger investments, the people that maybe getting ten rounds, you know, they’ve got a lot of questions cause they’re not sure about doing this.

But the people who have been investing money in the stock market and all this stuff, they call in five minutes $360,000.00 dollar’s worth of rounds.

Why are they doing that? What made them do that?

They see it in the message. They see why they need to change this. Not for protecting self, but to, first of all to be transitional so you have something, and you hold something until you can get to where you need to get with your little five acres or your hundred acres or whatever you can get.

But this is something you immediately can do.

But it is always good when evil is vanquished.

It is always a better future when light starts to shine in the darkness.

It always will go well for us when God comes and changes our direction with His promptings, His help and then the final things is His admonitions.

So, this is an opportunity to take now.

That’s what the Miraculous Medal Medjugorje round is about. It is to take an opportunity now in the green wood that you can’t take in the dry wood.

It would be impossible because everything is going to be lost. Physically and spiritually, Our Lady has said place everything at God’s disposal.

Why would you want not to come in line spiritually with everything. Both the temporal goods and those eternal goods?

So, if you’ve got what you have and you want to turn it to the temporal good to an eternal good that can help people.

I mean I’m excited to think that there is 480,000 rounds out there and we are just starting with this, that is going to end up in nonbelievers hands.

The book It Ain’t Gonna Happen has got a tremendous story of a Jewish man who didn’t want the Miraculous Medal who ends up, I won’t ruin the story for you, you’ve got to read the book because it is a beautiful, incredible story.

The Vatican even recognized it.

And there have been millions of conversions through this.

So, when we can turn our temporal goods into something which is our necessity anyway, we have to have it, and we can turn it into conversion, it is just a win-win.

There is no loss to it. So, I want to encourage you to get everyone to read It Ain’t Gonna Happen during this season, buy as many as you can, give it out, that’s the best way to introduce people to this.

And I’ve used issues from politics to the environment to government to the Constitution to the Declaration to our nation to wars to peace to criminals…we use these issues to bring Our Lady through the back door.

[ANNOUNCER]

And again, you have been listening to a Friend of Medjugorje, December 23, 2010. The title of the broadcast, “Need Poverty to Make You Happy?”

Those of you who are interested in the Miraculous Medal Medjugorje Silver Round can contact Century Silver Exchange, toll-free at 877-936-7686. Again 877-936-7686.

Again, we want to remind you that the work that a Friend of Medjugorje is doing for Our Lady for the world is the single most important work to be done.

Remember this mission in your prayers and also remember it with your financial support.

If there is any mission to give to, a Friend of Medjugorje’s mission of Caritas is the mission to give to.

And so, to conclude, here is a Friend of Medjugorje, December 23, 2010.

[A FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Once years ago, I was at Granger catalogue where at the counter buying something, a part for something and he was frustrated with the computer and he finally said, you know it makes about as much sense using these computers as going out my back door, going around the house to my mailbox, come back out, back to my back house, back into the house.

You know, when he said that I remembered as a teenager going to NAPA for auto parts, they just pulled it right off the shelf.

So, what tends to speed us up isn’t always an advance.

Yeah, you can argue these points, but simply the principle about that is we go backwards while we think we are going forward and that is where we are culturally, both economically and spiritually.

And so, Our Lady is coming to change this direction. Our Lady has come to show us a new way to live, a time where you will get to know God more.

This family, you just heard the story of, this true story, knows God more.

And they knew the joy of God in what most people say is poverty, but was it really poverty? Is it really that way?

We have spiritual poverty today and that is our danger.

And remember Christmas doesn’t end on the 25^th like secular society and all the radio stations will quit playing their music and suddenly Jesus is aborted, He’s dead to them.

But not to us. Christmas is going into January. We keep our tree up well into January.

So, we wish you a Merry, Merry Christmas.

We wish you the most Our Lady can give and what Jesus gives to us in His Mother.

We love you and wish you Our Lady.

[NARRATOR]

The subject matter contained in this presentation is based on Biblical principles and designed to give you accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that neither the presenter nor the broadcaster is engaged to render legal, accounting, or other professional advice. Since your situation is fact-dependent, you may wish to additionally seek the services of an appropriately licensed legal, accounting, real estate, or investment professional.

This ends the Mejanomics broadcast with a Friend of Medjugorje. These broadcasts are available as CDs which are sent directly to your doorstep on a monthly subscription. For information, contact Caritas in the U.S. at 205-672-2000.

 

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