Giving it all away

I heard this story years ago from a missionary I know in Mexico:

An evangelist was traveling from church to church in Mexico. As he concluded his meetings at a small village church, he told the congregation, “I need to purchase an airline ticket to fly to my next destination. I don’t have any money to do that, but I believe God will speak to one of you, and this need will be supplied.”

After the service, everyone filed out of the church—except one person. A poor widow remained. She walked up to the pastor and the evangelist and offered to pay for the airline ticket.

“How will you do that?” the pastor asked. “You have no money.”

“I will sell my milk cow,” she said.

“You can’t do that,” he said, “That’s your livelihood. If you sell the cow, you will have no means of supporting yourself.”

The pastor and the evangelist both did their best to talk her out of it. But she would not be dissuaded. “You’ve always said we should listen to God’s voice and do what He says,” she told her pastor. “And I believe God is telling me to do this.”

She sold her cow.

Meanwhile, the evangelist tried his best to raise the money some other way, but no funds came in. Finally, he reluctantly accepted her offering, and flew on to his next destination.

He almost forgot about this widow, until one day many months later he was preaching in a church in Mexico City. After the service, a woman invited him and others into her beautiful home for a meal. After the meal was over, she said to him, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Then it dawned on him that this was the widow who had given up her livelihood to buy him an airplane ticket.

“Tell me the story,” he said. So she told him what happened.

“When my husband died, his brother cheated me out of my inheritance, and left me with nothing but one milk cow. But when I sold it, an angel of God found my brother-in-law in a bar. He stood there with a flaming sword, and helped my brother-in-law understand that he needed to give me my share.”

Sometimes we need to push into the unknown with God. I don’t think this widow had any idea of what was on the other side of her sacrifice. But when you know that Jesus is telling you to step out of the boat, know also that He takes responsibility for what happens to you.

From the Bible:
…when your treasures consume you; you come up empty. Instead, make God your treasure; then your wealth will serve His purposes. Luke 12:21 The Easy Bible

Photo credit: Adapted from a photo by Tatters (Tatiana Gerus), Flickr, Creative Commons License?