A story on the theme of Mark 12.38-44 (The Widow’s Offering)
Title: “Giving Out of Poverty”
Theme: We can be generous toward God because of God's "all-in" generosity to us
Change the names and genders and parental configurations as works best for your context.
Zach tripped and fell. He was in his room and there were so many toys and trucks and balls and books and gloves and shoes on his floor that he could hardly move without stepping on somehting. He wasn’t surprised that he’d tripped. It wasn’t the first time. You would have wondered why he didn’t fall more. It wasn’t that Zach was so messy and never cleaned up his room. It was that he had so many things that he didn’t have enough places to store them and so they spilled out all over his room; from his closet; from his bookshelves; from under his bed. He hadn’t asked for all these things. He had been given them by his parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. It was too much. Some of it he had never played with; never used. It was getting close to Christmas and he wondered what he would do if he got more stuff. Where would he put it?
Then he got an idea. What if he gave some of it away? To kids who didn’t have anything or didn’t have much. He thought about giving all of it away when he fell, but he thought that the people who gave him the gifts might not like that. He’d have to pick through what he had.
He began to go through his things. First he set out in the hallway everything that he had never played with or even taken out of their boxes. Any kids who got one of these would be getting a brand-new toy. Then he looked for the things that he hardly every used. They looked almost new. He set those aside. While he was doing this he got thinking about how great the kids who got these things would feel and it made him feel so good that pretty soon the give-away group of things was bigger than the I’ll-keep-that group of things. And when he stopped to take a break, he noticed some things in the give-away group that he wasn’t sure he wanted to give away. But he had made up his mind and he didn’t move them back to the I’ll-keep-that group.
His mom called him to supper and at supper he told his mom and dad what he was doing. They thought a moment and then told him what a good idea it was. They would help him find kids who would like to get what he had to give away. And they told him that they didn’t mind if he gave away even some of the things they had given him. They told him that they would try not to give him so much that it would be a problem for him.
In some ways, it was hard for Zach to give away all those things, because he really liked some of them. But he knew that he had very generous parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and that he would always have some things to play with. In fact, he decided that he would tell his grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins that for this next Christmas, they could give gifts to the group he had picked out to help give his give-away toys to other kids. They could just tell him what they gave and it would be like giving it to him. He would always have enough, but now other kids would have enough, too. I wonder what you have that you might give away to someone else this Christmas?
