“Throw money out the win­dow; watch the happy peo­ple catch it.” — Juliana Hat­field, Let’s Blow it All

Upon com­ing to Jesus I rec­og­nized that I had an oblig­a­tion to be char­i­ta­ble toward the poor and to give toward any­one ask­ing me. This was a topic that I wrote about in the August 3, 2006 entry, “Remem­ber the Poor”. My pre­vi­ous way of doing things was to never give any­thing to any­one. So I enjoyed the new expe­ri­ence of being able to help those in need or some­times just ran­dom strangers as the spirit lead me.

One day I was dri­ving and I had some cash in my car and I was pray­ing and con­sid­er­ing that I might look for an oppor­tu­nity to bless some­one with it. As I was pray­ing God spoke to me and told me to throw it out the win­dow. This con­fused me quite a bit. “After all,” I thought, “wouldn’t it be bet­ter for me to give it a poor per­son than to waste it.” But again he spoke to me and told me to throw it out the win­dow. Even though it wasn’t a large sum of money I will admit that it was tough to be obe­di­ent to throw money away like that.

God never really told me why he wanted me to do that. I had some thoughts, such as per­haps it was sup­posed to be a prophetic sign of some­thing. Or I con­sid­ered if it wasn’t that some­one in need would later run across that money. Or I thought that it might just be to test me and refine my char­ac­ter in some way. But, in think­ing about it I think I did learn some­thing impor­tant. As I drove I was think­ing about a per­son in need that I could’ve given the money to and then it occurred to me that it still wasn’t beyond God’s love or power to pro­vide for them. He really didn’t need my money to do it.

Here is the rad­i­cal, hum­bling truth of the mat­ter — God doesn’t need us to give money to the poor and he can pro­vide for their needs with­out us.

It may seem shock­ing but, like Jesus, I invite you to con­sider the birds. We start by pic­tur­ing the famil­iar scene of an old man sit­ting on a park bench feed­ing pigeons. If the old man stopped com­ing would the pigeons starve? Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the air, for they nei­ther sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heav­enly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26)

Although some birds do enjoy their daily bread by the gen­eros­ity of lit­tle old men sit­ting on benches at a park throw­ing seed; for the most part the birds of heaven are pro­vided for with­out any kind of human inter­ven­tion. Jesus uses this exam­ple to show that in like man­ner God can pro­vide for us.

But why do the scrip­tures repeat­edly call for us to give gen­er­ously to the poor and afflicted? Let’s go back to that old man in the park. What does he get out of it? Which of the pigeons ever turned around and said, “thank you”? Which of them ever returned the favor and took him out for a meal? Obvi­ously, none. How­ever, in feed­ing them man receives the per­sonal hap­pi­ness of tak­ing care of God’s cre­ation. As Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)

Because God loves us he graces us with the oppor­tu­nity to be just like him and to expe­ri­ence his joy. Notice how Jesus encour­ages us to be like our Father in these ways:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neigh­bor’ and ‘hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who per­se­cute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the right­eous and the unright­eous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax col­lec­tors do the same, don’t they? And if you only greet your broth­ers, what more do you do? Even the Gen­tiles do the same, don’t they? So then, be per­fect, as your heav­enly Father is per­fect.” — Matthew 5:43–48

God doesn’t need us to give money to the poor and he can pro­vide for their needs with­out us — yet he gra­ciously allows us to pro­vide for their needs in imi­ta­tion of him so that we can know his joy and happiness.

I shared this thought with a friend one morn­ing and later that day she had an expe­ri­ence that con­firmed this truth. It is her habit to stop by a local gas sta­tion on her way to work for a drink. When moved to she will seek out a home­less indi­vid­ual or some­one oth­er­wise in need to give a lit­tle money to. On this day she had a ten dol­lar bill in her purse that she thought she might look for some­one to give to. She spot­ted a home­less man com­ing up to the counter and thought that he might be in need. But, before she could give him the money he went up to the counter and handed a lot­tery ticket to the cashier. He said that he had found it on the ground and could she check and see if it was worth any­thing. In doing so he found out that it was a win­ning ticket; but, the prize was more than the store was allowed to give out of the reg­is­ter as the max­i­mum pay­out was $600.

So while I do not con­done the lot­tery, I do rec­og­nize that God can pro­vide in mirac­u­lous ways like this and he doesn’t always choose to use our unright­eous riches. I believe real­iz­ing this can help keep our atti­tude in check when giv­ing so that we do not think too highly of our­selves. It also rein­forces what a true bless­ing it is that God will allow us to pro­vide for the needs of oth­ers and to share in his joy!