Some time ago, my friend, Gertrude Slabach, did a blog titled, The Two Things that Define Character. She quoted her father as saying, “There are two things that tell the character of a person: settling an estate or building a line fence.” An interesting statement. Immediately, I thought of an example of each of these situations in my past.

When it was time to settle my mother’s estate, her six children and our spouses gathered in Mother’s bedroom. Her will had stated that her belongings were to be divided among us, share and share alike, and no quibbling!* Someone said Ron, my oldest brother, should choose first since he had been the executor of the will and had done all the work. No arguments there! Ron only wanted one thing, and we all agreed he should have the item he wanted.

As various ones voiced their desires, nearly everyone prefaced their statements with, “If no one else wants this…” and were told promptly, “If you want that, you should have it.” Not one objection was raised and there was absolutely “no quibbling.”  I’m sure there were things more than one person would have liked to have, but on that day, self took a back seat and harmony prevailed. I can’t say this has always been true, but in that situation, the Beiler family exhibited good character by Gert’s father’s standards. Mother, who loved harmony more than anything, would have been so pleased.

The other incident had to do with a line boundary in our neighborhood in Penn Hills. Boundaries  hadn’t been done well in our housing development, and nearly everyone’s front boundary line was in their neighbor’s front yard and their neighbor’s back boundary line was in their back yard. No one cared. We gave our neighbor verbal permission to put in a driveway that, technically, extended a few feet on our property.

About six months after we sold our home, I went back to visit and found our former next-door-neighbor in tears. The woman who bought our house had discovered that her neighbor’s driveway was on her property and, for no good reason, said she would sue them if they didn’t remove it! (A few days later, a neighborhood child was hurt on the gym set in the backyard of our former home and there was no more talk of the neighbor being sued.)

Gertrude’s father felt strongly that “a person’s true character is shown when it comes to working out differences in our property, our possessions and our money.” In these situations, it quickly becomes evident what we value most. For example, in the first incident above, I believe my brothers and sisters had already decided that relationships were more important than possessions. Nothing my mother owned was worth fighting over. In the second example, the woman who bought our house had no relationship with her neighbor and didn’t care about them at all. She only gave up the dispute when she thought she herself might be sued by another neighbor.

Make no mistake, our attitudes toward our property, our possessions, and our money matter to God. In Philippians 2:3-4, the Apostle Paul says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. If we follow these instructions, it will provide a good foundation for our character, and we will be able to pass the tests of character when they come.

Father, forgive us when we place more value on material things than on relationships. Change our hearts and make us like the One who was “meek and lowly of heart” (Matthew 11:29).