Religion: A Pastor Ponders

An Honest Man

by Pastor William Jenkins

February 10, 2006

George Washington once said, “I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”

A friend shared with me recently an experience he had in a local parking lot. It happened that he spotted a wallet on the lot. He picked it up and noticed that it was stuffed with forty 100 dollar bills. It was so full that it would not fold over. He looked for some kind of identification but at first did not see any. He took the bills out of the wallet and discovered a Social Security card.

He then walked into a nearby business and inquired if anyone had reported a lost wallet. No one had. He left and as he was walking to his car he noticed another car pulling out of a parking space near where he had found the wallet. He stopped the driver and inquired if he had lost a wallet. The driver had and correctly identified the lost wallet.

My friend returned the wallet with the $4,000 to its rightful owner. No reward was offered. My friends reward was a clear conscience for doing what was honorable even though others might think he was crazy. As a church pastor, I thought how this is the kind of person I would want to handle the finances of my church.

Honesty is so refreshing and rare. In his play, “Hamlet”, Shakespeare has one character say, “Ay, sir; to be honest is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.” How does one become honest with a find of four thousand dollars? They begin by being honest with four dollars.

A story is told of a bank clerk who was due for a good promotion. One day at lunch the president of the bank, who happened to be standing in the cafeteria line behind the clerk, saw him slip two pats of butter under his slice of bread so they wouldn’t be seen by the cashier and charged to him. That little act of dishonesty cost him his promotion. Just a few pennies worth of butter made the difference. The bank president reasoned that if an employee cannot be trusted in little things he cannot be trusted at all.

Dr. Madison Sarratt, who taught mathematics at Vanderbilt University, would say to his classes before an exam, ”Today I am giving two examinations; one in trigonometry and the other in honesty. I hope you will pass them both. If you must fail one, fail trigonometry. There are many good people in the world who cannot pass trig, but there are no good people in the world who cannot pass the examination of honesty.”

Just a little something to ponder this week.

League City United Methodist Church is located at 1411 Main Street (FM 518), one block east of Interstate 45. For information, call the church offices at 281-332-1557 or visit the website at

HYPERLINK - http://www.lcumc.org