Cora was a woman willing to give her last treasure for the Lord's work on earth...

Cora of the Plain

by Bill Evans with Brenda Evans

Cora lived close to nothing—no hill, no town, no neighbor. Nothing, that is, unless you count a dozen red chickens and two enormous dogs. Divided into parcels by dirt roads, her 640 acres of central Kansas land were as flat as an iron stove top. A square mile of scrub, prairie grass, and unbroken flatness.

Cora was bent at the waist over a huge wooden barrel between her house and a tool shed, both silver with age and no paint, when I drove up. Occupied with scooping out a dwindling supply of chicken feed, she didn’t hear my rented car. But two large silent dogs edged between us to let me know they heard, and I’d better not forget it.

My hello frightened her, and she straightened. Cora was lean and tall for a woman. Good Kansas breed. Probably 75, but strong enough to stand alone against a windy prairie with only a dozen chickens, two dogs, and an occasional magnificent tornado.

Staring at first, not unfriendly just questioning, she invited me in. The chickens clucked around us still waiting for the feed she didn’t deliver. They were as lean as Cora, and I figured they could also handle most things that came upon them on that vast plain—even coyotes. Maybe they’d fly into the trees scattered near the house and simply wait.

By phone, I had made a 10 o’clock appointment with Cora which she had apparently forgotten. I handed her my card, but she was still wary. It was the mid-1980s, and I was fund-raising for a ministry whose goal was to reach every home around the world with either a Bible or a Gospel tract.

The home office was in Southern California, but I traveled from coast to coast in all for directions. I was in a different hotel, different state most nights, but during the day in the homes of people like Cora, strangers to me but friends to the ministry I served.

“How do I know you are who you say you are?” she asked.

“You can call the home office,” I suggested.

“You dial, I’ll talk.” She pointed to a black boxy dial phone.

She was in her chair by a narrow window that looked out onto her short gravel drive and the unbroken desolation beyond. As she talked, she turned her gaze into the distance and then back to me, back and forth in her thoughts.

I liked this woman. She was tough, sober. No one would deceive her; nothing would chew her up and spit her out. Ever. When she hung up the receiver, she grasped me in a firm handshake that said she had learned I was representing the gospel ministry she loved.

Plain and unhurried, Cora told me her story. She was alone in her weathered two-story house, with no cash reserves, no investments, no back-up plan, and a 640-acre section of untillable soil that she assayed of little monetary value. She sent a modest monthly gift to our ministry out of her small Social Security check.

“But I want to give more,” she said. She spoke of the land. It probably was not sellable “out here,” she said, though she would not sell it even if it were. The land had come through her family from homesteading days. We both clearly saw her dilemma. She couldn’t make money off the land, but neither could she sell it. It must pass on in the family as it always had. She would not betray that trust.

Fierce and strong, yet womanly, Cora held on to the land like a grieving mother. Just hold on when there’s nothing else to do. Cora saw her financial ruin and brokenness as clearly as she saw the rusted tools and implements, useless in the shed out back. Like the land, they were eyesores, little more.

“I do have three things I treasure. I wonder if they’re valuable?” she said. “Could you take a look?” I nodded. She signaled for me to wait and left the room.

Through the window I looked down the gravel drive, winding away into the expanse she had lost herself in during our conversation. The Great Plains have a way of putting things in perspective, making me feel small—a dot on a vast sphere. Then there’s the sky that takes up three-fourths of all you see. My smallness—and hers—seemed absolute to me that morning as I gazed out upon all that God had made there on the Plains.

She returned with three woodworking tools cradled in her arms. They appeared to be antiques: a wooden block plane, a hand auger, and a wood chisel.

“These were gifts from my father, things he used to build our home and sheds in my childhood. But I’m willing to give them or sell them for the ministry if you think they are worth something—something monetary, I mean.” Her voice was deep with emotion.

I examined each. The various woods held rich patinas, worn smooth by working hands. Even the metal parts were beautiful with age and use.

“You can take them and sell them if you think they’ll help,” she said.

I knew I couldn’t. I was headed straight back to Kansas City to catch a plane that would take me to another stranger’s house that night. I had no way to pack and ship the antiques to the home office. Besides, their monetary value was small, very small, while to Cora they were a treasure. But how could I say all that?

“Cora, I can’t take them on the plane with me today. Besides, they are precious to you,” I began. “You keep them, at least for now. You are already giving sacrificially out of your monthly income. For years you have given what you can. Our ministry knows that; our Lord knows that. You have a generous and gracious heart. What more can anyone ask of you? Nothing.”

“All right, if that’s what you think is best. I’ll just hold on to them for now,” she said with a stronger voice.

As I steered the rental car down her gravel drive and turned east toward Kansas City, I knew she’d hold onto her three small treasures—but loosely—for that was the kind of woman she was, a woman willing to giver her last treasure for the Lord’s work on earth. Who else did I know that would do that?

I identified with Cora, though I’m neither a Kansan nor a woman. She was on a teeter-totter of sorts, balanced between her urge to hold on to her land and her longing to give generously.

About the Writer: Bill Evans, former director of the Free Will Baptist Foundation, lives in Cattletsburg, KY, with his wife Brenda, a retired English teacher. They are proud grandparents of seven.