You Can't Outgive God

During worship service this morning, everyone stood and sang a song, smiling and clapping and moving with the beat. Two women in the congregation began to pass baskets for the offering. Almost every member of our team began to hand out limpira (each one worth about 20 cents) to the children around them. Astonished eyes filled the room as the children looked at each other. The children did not wait for the basket to come to them. They rushed to the women to put their offering to God in the wicker baskets. For some of them it was the first time they had something to put in the basket. Their hearts were very glad. Their beautiful grins told the story. We smiled too, only some of us emphasized our smiles with tears of joy streaking down our cheeks.

It was almost like the loaves and fishes story. Just a few limpira seemed to multiply. The children kept coming and dropping their offering in the baskets. Then one little barefooted boy in ragged blue pants walked up to the basket with his hand full of limpira that had been given him and put them in one of the overflowing baskets. Almost unnoticed, without a pause, he then reached into his pocket and pulled it inside out as he took out the single crumpled limpira he had brought himself. He gently balanced it on the top of the pile in the basket and grinned all the way back to his seat, showing a gap where his two front teeth had been.

There was no gap in his heart.