Giving thoughts

When i lead one of my first ever morning service at my home church i introducted the offering with a bunch of quotes and things to get the congregation thinking. I stumbled over some of them last week...

“If you give what you do not need, it isn’t giving” Mother Teresa

In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John one out of every six verses deals with money. Of the twenty-nine parables Jesus told, sixteen deal with a person and his money.

“God judges what we give by what we keep” G. Mueller

Giving isn’t giving unless it hurts

“He who gives what he would readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice” Sir Henry Taylor

A mother wanted to teach her daughter a moral lesson. She gave the little girl a quarter and a dollar for church “Put whichever one you want into the collection plate and keep the other one for yourself,” she told the girl. When they were coming out of church, the mother asked the daughter which amount she had given. “Well,” said the little girl, “I was going to give the dollar but, just before the collection, the man in the pulpit said that we should be cheerful givers. I knew I'd be a lot more cheerful if I gave the quarter, so I did”

Halford Luccock, a Yale professor, tells of the Franks whose “whole armies were sometimes given baptism at one stroke. Many warriors went into the water with their right hands held high so that they did not get wet. Then they could say, “This hand has never been baptized,” and they could swing their battle axes just as freely as ever. The modern counterpart of that partial baptism is seen in many people who have been baptized, all except their wallets. These they hold high out of the water.”

A few Sunday's ago i retold the story of the axeman.
But for me, the one that hits home is the anonymous saying that giving isn't really giving unless it hurts...