Last winter, our freezer was full and my wife and I got started talking about freezing and canning food. I said that sometime when we have venison I would like to can some of it, like we did long ago. One thing led to another and Mary Beth said she wondered where the spiral bound notebook was that she used for a canning log, back when she canned vegetables, first from her parents’ or grandparents’ gardens when we were newly married and then later from our own garden. She said her mother used to keep a log, and in fact all the women in Thomastown where they lived when she was a kid kept canning logs.
When I asked why they kept canning logs, she said they did it so they could tithe their produce, donating it to the Baptist Orphanage in Jackson. Her father, who was the pastor of Thomastown Baptist Church, would load up their car with boxes of jars full of green beans, tomatoes, peas, butter beans, squash, corn, pickles, jelly, and preserves. She would go with him sometimes to deliver the bounty to the orphanage, and they would bring back boxes of empty jars from the previous season.
Thomastown was a small town in the middle of Mississippi, full of poor people who had to work as hard as they could year round to feed themselves and their children, but they were good hearted enough and committed to giving the tithe to the Lord, in this case to the orphans who after all were the ones who were hungry.
I have found good-hearted people everywhere I’ve been, but Mississippians—although the state is ranked at the bottom of nearly every indicator of economics, education, and health care—nevertheless are generous in giving to charitable causes. For instance, a Philanthropy Roundtable report shows Mississippi ranking #2 in giving as a percentage of adjusted gross income–at 5%, in comparison to #1 Utah at 6.6%, Alabama at 4.9%, and at the other end of the scale, New Jersey, Vermont, and Maine, each at 2%, and New Hampshire at 1.7%. (2015 report) https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/statistics/who-gives
A lot of that giving is through the church—the Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Catholics, and even some Episcopalians and Lutherans—all support the widows and orphans, the sick and impoverished, and those fallen on hard times.
Mississippi Food Network (www.msfoodnet.org) is an organization I support in a small way. They are part of the Feeding America group (www.feedingamerica.org), and with their motto “Making Donated Food Available to Charities Feeding the Needy,” they would have been totally down with folks giving of their hard-won produce to feed the orphans in Jackson.
Although people sometimes quote Jesus when he said, “The poor you have with you always,” like waving a flag of surrender in the daunting struggle against poverty, a better banner to raise would be his observation of “the widow’s mite,” by which Jesus honored those who give generously of their own meager resources. In many instances poor people are the ones willing to give what little they have to help others who are struggling a bit more than they are. That’s not to downplay the philanthropy of wealthy individuals and corporations who are guided by socially responsible values—they do much good and often target opportunities the rest of us can’t touch.
It’s a crying shame that with all the riches in this country anyone ever has to go to bed hungry, especially children. I know some people get all bristly when anyone goes on about helping people who are in poverty, automatically stereotyping them as lazy and unwilling to work. There are people like that, but there are many more who work all they can and still remain stuck in poverty through no fault of their own. I think the whole point of the Bible saying “God loves a cheerful giver” is that folks need to have open hearts before they have open hands for giving. I know people like that. You probably do too. I know some folks who grow a big garden every year and give away most of what they produce. They, along with those garden tithers with their canning logs, have to rate right up there with the kind of cheerful givers that make the world a better—and in this case—a less hungry place.
Garry Breland 