What More Can We Ask?

There once was a farmer who was well-known for his generosity. His friends could not understand how he could give so much and yet remain able to give even more. “We cannot understand how you do it,” they said. “You give far more than any of the rest of us, and yet you always seem to have more to give.” To which the farmer replied, “Oh, that’s easy to explain. You see, I keep shoveling into God’s bin, and God keeps shoveling back into mine — and of course God has the bigger shovel.”

John Bunyan put it this way: A man there was and they called him mad, the more he gave, the more he had.

It’s a strange paradox, but it is a Christian paradox: we are successful as Christians not to the degree to which we find ways for our own ego to be pumped up, but to the degree that we identify with the needs of others for the…