Our Lord’s Teachings About Money 43 century, that it was safe to give to God’s purposes the last penny at any moment, with the perfect assurance that more would come in before another need should arise. And there was never one failure for seventy years! V. SUPERIOR BLESSEDNESS Kindred to this law of recompense is the law of superior blessedness. “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Paul quotes this as a saying of our Lord, but it is not to be found in either of the Gospel narratives. Whether he meant only to indicate what is substantially our Lord’s teaching, or was preserving some precious words of our Great Teacher, otherwise unrecorded, is not important. I t is enough that this saying has the authority of Christ. What ever the blessedness of receiving, that of giving belongs to a higher plane. Whatever I get, and whatever good it brings to me, I only am benefited; but what I give brings good to others—to the many, not the one. But, by a singular decree of God, what I thus surrender for myself for the sake of others comes back even to me in larger blessing. I t is like the moisture which the spring gives out in streams and evap oration, returning in showers to supply the very channels which filled the spring itself. VI. COMPUTATION BY COMPARISON We rise a step higher in considering God’s law of compu tation. How does He reckon gifts? Our Lord teaches us that it is by comparison. No one narrative is more telling on this theme than that of the poor widow* who dropped into the treasury her two mites. The Lord Jesus, standing near, watched the offerings cast into the treasury. There were rich givers that gave large amounts. There was one poor woman, a widow, who threw in two mites, and He declared her offer ing to be more than any of all the rest, because, while they ♦Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-4.
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