| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 16 |
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The abundant life need not be known by its large money gifts. The tendency in these days is to measure every man’s value to the world by charities. Money has its value. Those who contribute to charity, to education, to religion, if their gifts are wisely bestowed, are blessing in the world. It is the bounden duty of all who possess wealth to use it in doing good. But money is never the best gift we can bestow on others, and those who cannot give money may yet be really generous givers.
A man’s money is not the only thing a man has to give. He can give love, sympathy, encouragement, hope, cheer, and these gifts will help where money would be only a mockery. There are great needs which money has no power to satisfy. There are sorrows money cannot alleviate. It was one of the conceits of ancient poetry that the oarsman Charon was permitted once to visit this world and from the mountaintop to look down upon the cities and palaces and works of men. As he went away he said: “Why, all these people are spending their time building birds’ nests. No wonder they fail and are ashamed.” Building birds’ nests to be swept away in the floods, when they might be building palaces of beauty to abide forever. If all Christians would put the same earnestness into their Christian life and word which they put into their bird-nest building, what would they not accomplish for the kingdom of Christ!
Jesus never gave money. Yet the world has never known such a lavish giver as He was. Imagine Jesus going about with His hands full of coins and dispensing them wherever He went among the poor, the lame, the blind, the beggars, the lepers, the sick — money, and nothing else. What a poor, paltry service His would have been, in comparison with the wonderful ministry of kindness and love He performed in His journeyings through the land! Suppose He had given a coin to the woman who lay at His feet crying for her poor daughter’s deliverance. Would that have comforted her? Suppose He had put a handful of money in the hands of the blind beggar at Jericho, instead of opening His eyes — would the generous gift have meant as much to the poor man?
“Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee” (Acts 3:6), said Peter at the Beautiful Gate to the lame man. Then the man was lame no more. Was not the healing a better gift to the poor man than if he had filled His hands with coins? Was it not better that the man should be made strong, so that he would not need to beg anymore, than that he should have been supported a day or two longer in poverty and mendicancy?
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