You Are Worth 10 Cows

I read this story along time ago in the Reader's Digest. It had such a huge impact on me that I made copies for all my friends and forced them to read it. It was such a revelation that my friend, Amy and I performed it at our 20’s group during one of our yearly Valentine’s Dinner parties.

My motto is that we should love our friends not because they are beautiful, we should love them with the kind of love that makes them beautiful. This story reiterates it perfectly.

This is one of the mandatory articles I make my Inner Beauty small group read. As you can see, Johnny Lingo's wife is still in my heart - it reminds me that Jesus paid more than 10 cows for us. He paid with His Life.


JOHNNY LINGO'S 8-COW WIFE By Patricia McGerr

When I sailed to Kiniwata, an island in the Pacific, I took along a notebook. After I got back it was filled with descriptions of flora and fauna, native customs and costume. But the only note that still interests me is the one that says: "Johnny Lingo gave eight cows to Sarita’s father." And I don’t need to have it in writing. I’m reminded of it every time I see a woman belittling her husband or a wife withering under her husband’s scorn. I want to say to them, "You should know why Johnny Lingo paid eight cows for his wife."

Johnny Lingo wasn’t exactly his name. But that’s what Shenkin, the manager of the guest house on Kiniwata, called him. Shenkin was from Chicago and had a habit of Americanizing the names of the islanders. But Johnny was mentioned by many people in many connections. If I wanted to spend a few days on the neighboring island of Nurabandi, Johnny Lingo would put me up. If I wanted to fish he could show me where the biting was best. If it was pearls I sought, he would bring the best buys. The people of Kiniwata all spoke highly of Johnny Lingo. Yet when they spoke they smiled, and the smiles were slightly mocking.

"Get Johnny Lingo to help you find what you want and let him do the bargaining," advised Shenkin. "Johnny knows how to make a deal." "Johnny Lingo!" A boy seated nearby hooted the name and rocked with laughter. "What goes on?" I demanded. "Everybody tells me to get in touch with Johnny Lingo and then breaks up. Let me in on the joke."

"Oh, the people like to laugh," Shenkin said, shruggingly. "Johnny's the brightest, the strongest young man in the islands, And for his age, the richest." "But if he’s all you say, what is there to laugh about?" "Only one thing. Five months ago, at fall festival, Johnny came to Kiniwata and found himself a wife. He paid her father eight cows!

I knew enough about island customs to be impressed. Two or three cows would buy a fair-to-middling wife, four or five a highly satisfactory one. "Good Lord!" I said, "Eight cows! She must have beauty that takes your breath away." "She’s not ugly," he conceded, and smiled a little. "But the kindest could only call Sarita plain. Sam Karoo, her father, was afraid she’d be left on his hands."

"But then he got eight cows for her? Isn’t that extraordinary?"

"Never been paid before."

"Yet you call Johnny’s wife plain?"

"I said it would be kindness to call her plain. She was skinny. She walked with her shoulders hunched and her head ducked. She was scared of her own shadow."

"Well," I said, "I guess there’s just no accounting for love."

"True enough," agreed the man. "And that’s why the villagers grin when they talk about Johnny. They get special satisfaction from the fact that the sharpest trader in the islands was bested by dull old Sam Karoo."

"But how?"

"No one knows and everyone wonders. All the cousins were urging Sam to ask for three cows and hold out for two until he was sure Johnny’d pay only one. Then Johnny came to Sam Karoo and said, ‘Father of Sarita, I offer eight cows for your daughter.’"

"Eight cows," I murmured. "I’d like to meet this Johnny Lingo." And I wanted fish. I wanted pearls. So the next afternoon I beached my boat at Nurabandi. And I noticed as I asked directions to Johnny’s house that his name brought no sly smile to the lips of his fellow Nurabandians. And when I met the slim, serious young man, when he welcomed me with grace to his home, I was glad that from his own people he had respect unmingled with mockery. We sat in his house and talked. Then he asked, "You come here from Kiniwata?"

"Yes."

"They speak of me on that island?"

"They say there’s nothing I might want they you can’t help me get."

He smiled gently. "My wife is from Kiniwata."

"Yes, I know."

"They speak of her?"

"A little."

"What do they say?"

"Why, just..." The question caught me off balance. "They told me you were married at festival time."

"Nothing more?" The curve of his eyebrows told me he knew there had to be more. "They also say the marriage settlement was eight cows." I paused. "They wonder why."

"They ask that?" His eyes lightened with pleasure. "Everyone in Kiniwata knows about the eight cows?" I nodded. "And in Nurabandi everyone knows it too." His chest expanded with satisfaction. "Always and forever, when they speak of marriage settlements, it will be remembered that Johnny Lingo paid eight cows for Sarita." So that’s the answer, I thought: vanity.

And then I saw her. I watched her enter the room to place flowers on the table. She stood still a moment to smile at the young man beside me. Then she went swiftly out again. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. The lift of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin the sparkle of her eyes all spelled a pride to which no one could deny her the right. I turned back to Johnny Lingo and found him looking at me. "You admire her?" he murmured. "She...she’s glorious. But she’s not Sarita from Kiniwata," I said.

"There’s only one Sarita. Perhaps she does not look the way they say she looked in Kiniwata." "She doesn’t. I heard she was homely. They all make fun of you because you let yourself be cheated by Sam Karoo." "You think eight cows were too many?" A smile slid over his lips.

"No. But how can she be so different?"

"Do you ever think," he asked, "what it must mean to a woman to know that her husband has settled on the lowest price for which she can be bought? And then later, when the women talk, they boast of what their husbands paid for them. One says four cows, another maybe six. How does she feel, the woman who was sold for one or two? This could not happen to my Sarita."

"Then you did this just to make your wife happy?"

"I wanted Sarita to be happy, yes. But I wanted more than that. You say she is different. This is true. Many things can change a woman. Things that happen inside, things that happen outside. But the thing that matters most is what she thinks about herself. In Kiniwata, Sarita believed she was worth nothing. Now she knows she is worth more than any other woman in the islands."

"Then you wanted -"

"I wanted to marry Sarita. I loved her and no other woman."

"But —" I was close to understanding.

"But," he finished softly, "I wanted an eight-cow wife."

Beauty is nothing less than Jesus

God is all about beauty. He is the light, while Satan is the reverse –darkness. We are to worship God in the beauty of holiness. We worship Satan in the beauty of unholiness.

In Matthew 16:17, Peter had a revelation that Jesus is Lord. He doesn’t understand from his own knowledge; the Holy Spirit gave him that revelation. Understanding doesn’t change a life. It doesn’t make you more attractive or more beautiful for understanding the Bible or by understanding what God thinks. A revelation of how God thinks will change a life.

You want to be beautiful? Worship God in Holiness. It is all about the beauty of Holiness. Holiness is beautiful. Unholiness (premarital sex, adultery, cattiness, pornography, gossip, venting, judging others) is ugly. When we do any of the examples above, we are worshipping Satan in his unholiness, we become ugly and no matter how many money we spend on clothes, make-up, shoes, facial products, we will never be beautiful.

Proverbs 20:29 The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the beauty of the old. Gray hair represents wisdom. Wisdom is beautiful. It means that you know what to do, when to do it, how to do it and YOU DO IT! A fool is ugly. A fool knows what to, when to do it, how to do it but HE DOESN’T DO IT! The only way to follow the wise is to allow the Holy Spirit to guide you and not let the flesh control you.

We have the Holy Spirit in us, but the book of Ephesians tells us that we can grieve and quench the Holy Spirit. We do this by any kind of unholiness. If we want to be beautiful and to stay beautiful, we have to radiate Holiness, to walk, talk, think, breath like Jesus- nothing less than how Jesus would be. Once we are like Christ; we will radiate holiness and that is what makes us beautiful –to God and to man.

This week has been a roller coaster ride for me. My emotion has been up and down spinning without stopping. Weeks like this make me wonder if I truly have Jesus in my heart. The world is in control of my emotions when I know I should allow the Holy Spirit to guide me. The only way to get off this crazy dysfunctional ride is to leave it with God, all of it – the longing, the dreams, the goals. Sometimes, you have to toss away everything and start with nothing. Sometimes, that is the only way to be happy, the only way to be content.

What do you need to throw away?

All I Want

His mother responded to him on the phone, "You can't stop some people, Jones. They come into your life destine to leave it. You can wrap your arms tight around them. The best you can hope to do is slow them down a little 'cause there's no holding on tight enough."

Israel: I try to hold on to the memories, the smell, the touch, the friendships, the hugs, but they all slowly slip away. The only thing that is everlasting is the love of Christ. Your spouse might leave, your children, your family, your friends will, too. But God will never leave you, no matter what you do.

Israel Day 7 – Beauty need only be a Whisper

The last night on-the-town is an event in Old Jerusalem near the Wailing Wall. Sixty years ago, Israel was established. The state of Israel is the headquarter for all Jews to come and be safe – to show that Jewish blood is not cheap anymore.

We sit and applaud as the 60th Anniversary celebration starts. Benny Hinn speaks and brings our spirits high, more in awe with Israel. Rueben Morgan leads us into a night of amazing worship for our well loved Father. After falling madly in love with Jesus all over again, the event ends too soon.















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In my hotel room, I sleep, smiling and free from worries of my mind, knowing that I met many wonderful on-fire lovers of God. His people are strong and we are growing everyday. And that is the beauty of it all; God whispers to us by bringing His children together.

Israel Day 6 – The World of Yesterday

Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum – killed, murdered, raped, spat on, kicked, stabbed, humiliated, stripped of home and family – 6 million Jews killed and 1.5 million were children.

The Jewish people are poetic. They named Yad Vashem from Isaiah 56:5, a memorial to the Names. So much pain; lives wasted. In the museum, my heart tries to conceal the emotion, I try to be strong, but the tears build up and pour out like an angry storm. As I stand, in this place of stolen lives, watching videos about the survivors, trying hard to hide the sadness and tears collecting on the lenses of my glasses, a woman walks up to me and asks, “Was this video worth watching?” I nod and give her a quick glance. Inside, I want to scream, “What the hell! These are people’s lives! What do you mean was it worth ten minutes of my time to listen to their stories?” A heavy weariness spreads over me. I walk away and sit on a bench to watch a different video. God is good. He sends a familiar face with a calming spirit to sit next to me, allowing my sorrow to rest.

I cry for you and I cry for me too. The Jews are God’s chosen people and the enemy has much to fear, that’s why he tried so hard to get rid of them all. As I type this, I am still filled with sadness.

Israel Day 5 – So much and so little

GodTV gave us a full tour. There was so much to do and so little time.

~Our breath inhales the fact that we are at the same spot where Jesus healed the man who was lame for 38 years – the Pool of Bethesda (House of Mercy). (John 5: 1-12)
~The Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus agonized the night he was betrayed.
~The Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, the most holy place accessible to the Jewish people today. Thousands of people gather daily for prayer. My roommate, Sheryl and our new found friend, Matthew snuck off at night and went to pray among the Jewish people – a great night of adventure with my kindred spirits. The best night ever!
~The Garden Tomb is where I believe Jesus was truly laid after His crucifixion, a powerful visit with God’s presence strong and near. We all communion, pray for one another and praise God with our humble singing.
~The Upper Room, where the Last Supper was held and King David’s tomb.