More Value than a Coffee Pot

A missionary in a Muslim-majority country got a call one day from his wife. Their local house-helper (a common practice in that country) had accidentally dropped and broken their carafe from the coffee maker. (Coffee isn’t common in that country – everyone drinks tea. So, the coffee pot was considered precious.)

The missionary’s wife called to tell him in advance, not that the coffee pot was broken, but that the house-helper was terrified to tell him. Because women are not valued highly in that culture, she probably expected to be fired or even struck when the “man of the house” got…