Gift

Overjoyed, they had not lost their way. The seekers were now travelers, adventurers, risk-takers, and they were overjoyed when they saw the star, His star again—the sign to those looking. 

Mary opens the door to foreigners, men speaking another language, rugged from a journey, smelling like camels. They know who she is, the mother of a promised Redeemer. The Redeemer toddles around the room, while Mary puts the breakables out of reach, and the wise men are face to face with a prophecy thirteen hundred years old. They are awed. They bow to him. Mary doesn't understand their words, but their actions speak. They know. Again, she revisits the night of her birthing in a barn. She lets the memories come forward of the breathless shepherds she will never forget, the things they told her they had seen, their excitement. 

It's happening again, a reminder that the sleepless nights nursing, the frustrating days with a toddler, are simply temporary, all leading to a divine moment of which she still is uncertain of the ending.... where will this end? 

The foreigners give her little boy gold, frankincense, myrrh, and the expense is staggering to Mary. The blessing. The tremendous blessing laid down as gifts for her child. As the foreigners place their luxurious gifts at her boy’s feet, they look up to catch her eyes filled with tears, hands trembling; she nods. 

Our church had grown to twenty. 

Twenty people from our community. Some had heard of Jesus for the very first time right there in our living room. He had come to get them, He found them in the ger district slums, He saw them picking garbage, He noticed them fighting addiction, He saw their cry in the orphanage, and he showed up to transform. When they found Jesus, they too were overjoyed. The fruit of their joy was to give.


"Why don't we take offerings here at your church as they do at other churches?” one of our first believers asked.
 I went on to explain that we are not an official church. Troy wasn't paid to pastor, and we didn't need any help keeping the electricity on. 

She heard what I didn’t say.
We don't take an offering because YOU ARE THE POOR. YOU ARE THE SUFFERING. How could we ever take an offering from the poor and suffering? 


But she persisted.
"I think we should give something. God has been good to us.
He has shown us who He is. That makes me want to give. It makes me want to be good to others."


Troy and I insisted they use their money to feed their families. Most of them made an average of $100 a month, with the cost of living equivalent to that in the USA. It was impossible to imagine taking a church offering. 

One week later, she surprised us. "I've made an offering bag.” She held out a hand-sewn bag with drawstrings to pull it tightly closed. She silenced my resistance with one sentence. "Even the poorest of us has something to give.” she continued: "I'm going to leave it here on the shelf. If anyone has anything left to give, or if God tells you to give, please put it into this bag, and we will see what God will do with the money of the poor. " 

 I was speechless as the room erupted with clapping. They were overjoyed to consider giving. 

Months passed, and eventually, the bag was full. The house was abuzz with excitement. We prayed over the money, asking God to show us who needed it and how we as a church could help. The truth is, everyone in that room needed it. Needed it bad, not for wants but survival-type needs. And yet, they prayed earnestly for God to show them someone in a worse kind of suffering than they were. And he did. 

A woman down the street was very sick and needed medicine. There was no money for her to purchase it, and she sat in her home without a way out of her pain and illness. It was quickly decided we were to buy her medicine and pay her doctor bills. I have never seen a group so excited to meet a need. I felt total shame that I had underestimated their love. I had underestimated their ability to help, considering them helpless. Helpless they were not. To one woman down the street, they were her rescuers. Rescued by the suffering poor. 

Yes, indeed, I too was rescued by the suffering poor. I was rescued from selfishness and stingy giving. From them, I learned to give until it hurts. 

What a gift.