June 10, 2012

“Whoever is faithful with little is also faithful with much. (Luke 16:10 CEB)

Someone recently sent me a heart-warming story: a working man always put his spare change into a jar to help pay for his son’s college education. The son always saw the jar on his father’s dresser, and it made a big impression. After the boy finished college the jar disappeared. Then, a few years later, his wife took their daughter into the father’s bedroom for a diaper change… and there was the jar on the dresser again, collecting change for the next generation.

Sometimes we get discouraged about generosity because we think that our “little bit” can’t make much difference. All we have is a dollar or two, or a pocket full of change. But those little bits add up.

Look at the youth group. Those M&M tubes full of change they have collected will help send them to camp this year! Or look at our Sunday School kids. This past year they collected their offerings to buy animals through the Heifer Project to help hungry and poor people around the world. Since Christmas, the kids collected $129.26. That number tells me that every week there were pennies, nickels and dimes tossed into the plate, along with a few crumpled dollar bills carefully fished from the bottoms of pockets. Yet every penny counted, and the kids have sent everything from a water buffalo to a flock of chicks around the world this year!

Sometimes summer is a slim time for the church. People go on vacation and they forget that the work of the church goes on. Find a way to do your bit this summer. Drop your pocket change into a jar on the kitchen counter and dump it in the offering plate from time to time. Or set up Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) to give automatically from your bank account using the form on our website (http://www.mosineeumc.org/rsrc/EFTform.pdf).

Be faithful in a little, or in a lot. Don’t worry about the rattle of coins during the church service. Those clinks and clanks are a joyful noise, and God will put ‘em to work!

Pastor Park