Episode 66 - Trust in God and be Generous

When we act out of our trust in God, we are generous. We see this in the story of Elijah and Widow. We see this in the story of the Widow's mite. How can we trust the Lord to become more generous?

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Paul, Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance, and we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host. Paul Scarfone, thank you for being here today. So welcome back to Catholic money talk today, I wanted to talk about the readings that we just had, yeah, last Sunday, on the widow's might, but also the widow from the story in First Kings, with the prophet Elijah. And you know, if you're anything like me, when I sit in mass and I hear readings like this, my brain quickly relates what I'm hearing with the world around me, what's going on around me, and I think these two stories speak about a deep trust in God that promotes a great sense of gratitude. So I want to talk about that today. But before we do it, let's say a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father. We thank you for this day. We thank you for all the ways that you love and bless us, Lord. We know that you have a perfect plan for us. Allow us to yield to your Holy Spirit. Bless us this day. Give us great wisdom and confidence in your constant provision allow us to trust you more. We ask all this in Jesus name Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. So in the first reading at Mass this past Sunday, we heard about the widow with the prophet Elijah. There's a famine going on. Elijah says to her, make some food for me, and the Lord will never let your oil and flour run out until the famine is over. And this lady has to trust that what Elijah is saying to her is true, and she does. And it was funny, even at Mass, I'm watching the lector, the woman reading the reading, and as she's reading it, I could even see the joy on her face, on the reader's face, when she said she left and did as Elijah had said, she was able to eat for a year, and he and her son as well. The jar of flour did not go empty, nor did the jug of oil run out, right? Like, wow, that's amazing. That's amazing. But the Lord didn't give her like huge storehouses of flour and oil and say, hey, just slowly use this. It'll last you all the time you need no she had to use up everything she already had to make the cake for the bread for Elijah and God promised that she would never run out. He rewarded her generosity, right? He actually awarded her, rewarded her trust in the Lord. And then we went to the gospel. It was the widow's mite, right? Jesus observed people giving all these offerings at the temple, some very wealthy people giving very large gifts to the temple, and then a poor widow quietly comes by and places just, you know, two small coins, right? That's what we call the widow's mite into the temple treasury. And so there was a stark contrast, right, between all that the wealthy were able to give and the meager, the very small amount that this widow was able to give. And you know what Jesus started to do, or use this as an opportunity to do, was to just show the value of the widow's offering was far beyond the monetary worth, right? So why? Why would her small contribution be worth more than all the others, right? All the others, vast amounts of contribution, right? And the difference is not in the amount, but it's in the sacrificial nature of her gift, right? Because true generosity, it's measured by the heart, not the size of the gift. And I think a great example we see that with little kids, like, if we think about little kids, and if they have, you know, 100 cookies, let's just say 100 pieces of candy, right? We just had Halloween a few weeks ago because 100 pieces of candy. And me, as a parent, if I'm like, hey, those Reese's Pieces, those are my favorite candies. And my my kid, has 100 of them, and He gives me one of them, right? It was, it was nice. He's sharing. That's good. It's good to share. But I. So the beautiful part is when the kid has this last piece of candy, right and looks at me and says, Dad, I know you like Reese's Pieces. Do you can have the last one, right? And, and that's the difference, right? There's such a big difference in, you know, my little candy example, I feel so much more special when a little kid gives me their last piece of candy because they know I like it. Then if they give me one of the many hundreds that they have, right? I mean, they're both. Both are examples of sharing, but the one was giving the last piece like it's just pure selflessness, right? Because there's nothing left for them. There's nothing left for them. The Giver gives the last thing, there's nothing left for the giver, right? And then they just have to trust that they're going to be okay. And that's that sacrificial giving, right? If we look at the the widow and these wealthy people, the widow gave out of her meager existence, the wealthy gave out of their abundance, right? And her gift demonstrates just a complete trust in God, right, that he's going to provide the wealthy people they didn't, and that's not to say that they're not, they're not being generous, right? And that's that's not what I'm saying at all, that they're not being generous, but that true generosity is measured by the heart, not about the outward gift that we can see, right? And so Jesus, who can measure people's hearts because he can see them. He's able to state in that moment, right? The onlookers are thinking, wow, the lady, she just keep your two pennies, sweetie, like you need it more than the church does or however, right? But her heart needed to give it, and so Jesus was highlighting the fact that her gift was so much greater because of the condition of her heart, she gave every single thing that she had. And we know this. We know when that just this is a theme of Jesus. We think back to the rich young man when he says, Lord, what must I do to gain you know, salvation in your kingdom? And Jesus says, Go, sell what you have and give everything to the poor and then come follow me, and he couldn't do it. He couldn't do it because he had many possessions. He went away sad, right? He only wanted to be able to give from his abundance. He didn't want to give so much that it hurt. And that's a key part here. It's a key part. It's a great question for us to ask ourselves, is when we're being asked to give, and that could be our financial resources, it could be our time and service to others, it could be our gifts and talents. So that's really important to be able to give and give with a generous heart, right? So God looks at the heart, not at the outward appearance. It's so easy for many of us to look at the outward appearance, and we do it all the time, right? You look and you could see, oh, wow, this person, you know, maybe you're walking into the church, you see the the plaques of the benefactors of the Church, which is so great for these people to give and but we're not looking at their hearts, right? We're just looking at, wow. These are the people that gave at this level. These are the people that gave at this level. Wow, that that must be nice, good for them, right? But, but we don't actually, we don't know the story. We don't know if it was just out of just pure abundance and they didn't feel it, or if they gave everything they had to build the church and and I have found that when I start to let my mind wander looking at these outward appearances of generosity or perceived wealth or whatever it might be, I try to just have a great sense of gratitude to say, Lord, thank You that there are people that are generous and that are able to help build this church or support this mission, whatever It might be. Right? We stop comparing maybe ourselves to to other people's generosity, and we start just having a sense of gratitude that the Lord constantly provides. Because when a sense of gratitude is going to yield more trust in the Lord, right? And so, so these are great examples, these stories, right? And I just mentioned the rich young man as well, but the the widow with Elijah in First Kings, the story of the widow's mite here this past Sunday from Mark 12. They're great examples about trusting in the Lord, giving everything we have to the Lord, right to his service, and then try. Him and why? Why do we do that? Why do we do that? Well, it's very easy. It's because we actually don't own anything, right? The only thing we actually own, the only thing that is truly ours, are our decisions right and our actions, everything else, our money, our gifts, our talents, right, our ability to earn money, those are all gifts from God. He gave them to us, right? And he also gave us free will. And so with three free will, all we can truly own with the decisions we make, in the actions that happen because of our decisions, right? That's what we that's what we own. And the cool part about not owning stuff like money, it's so much easier to handle it right, and that's what this we hear this word in church, stewardship. That's what makes stewardship so easy. Just recently, talking to some folks about this topic, I said to them, you know, budgeting can feel really, really hard and challenging because we have emotions, maybe joy, fear, excitement, whatever they might be attached to dollars, right? Maybe we're worried about a bill that we have coming, or we're excited to spend some money on a particular item or experience or something, and those emotions kind of latch in, and it's hard, it's hard to control those but if we just kind of move out of that situation, we put ourselves in a different circumstance. What if we were managing money for someone else? And someone said, Look, here is $10,000 I need you to accomplish X, Y and Z. With this $10,000 you know, you have X amount of time to do it, right? But accomplish goals X, Y and Z, here's $10,000 we would do it. It wouldn't be that challenging. We would say, all right, $10,000.03 different goals. What are they? And we kind of create a plan and execute it. And why is that so easy? Well, it's easy because it's not our money, right? Someone else gave us the money and said, This is what you have to do with it. So we just, we just do that with it. It's very, very simple. That's what stewardship is, right? It's doing what we ought to do with what has been given to us. And so when we think about everything the Lord's given to us, and that could be our time, money, talents, whatever, whatever it might be, and we think about what's our call to stewardship with these things, the Lord's not interested in what the outward sign looks like. He's not he's interested in our hearts. When I talk to people about tithing and giving and supporting church, you know when things I say is, God doesn't need your money. He doesn't want your money. He wants your heart. And our hearts can be so tightly, so tightly tied to our treasure, right? For where your treasure is there, your heart will be also right. We're very tied to our treasure, because there's so many things that we may view it as maybe security, maybe freedom, and we want to be safe, and we want to be okay, and so when we Right, just like the widow with Elijah, that her food, that's how she was going to be okay, her flour and her oil. But when she gives that to Lord, surrenders it to the Lord. That is nothing but an outward sign of trust and generosity to the Lord great trust that he's going to take care of us. And so as we're managing our funds, our money, and we're, you know, and again, add time and talents in there as well. What are we giving to? What are we supporting? Are we giving from our excess from our abundance, or are we giving with the with our most precious treasure, right, with the last of what we have, or the best of what we have? Are we giving. Being sacrificially right, Jesus commended the widow for her faithfulness and trusting the Lord not in her financial status and able to give, you know, with multiple zeros on the end, true riches are determined by the attitude of the giver, the motivation of the giver, the heart of the giver. So here's my my challenge to you, can we examine our own hearts and examine our own motives in giving. Are we giving to be seen? Are we giving to be praised? Are we giving so that it's not inconvenient to us? Are we giving what's easy? Are we valuing our comfort, or are we going to give in sacrifice? Are we going to give in love? Are we going to give in generosity? Are we going to give in deep trust that the Lord will continue to provide for us? True generosity is not about how much we we give, as much as it's how we give. And so we need to encourage ourselves and those around us to have a deep trust in God, with everything, with our time, with our financial resources, with our abilities, with our gifts and our talents, so that we can all give sacrificially to our loving God and to His work. We'll never know until we get to heaven how much our small acts of faithfulness will look in God's eyes. Right our small, little acts of faithfulness, they might be very significant in God's eyes, and we won't know till we get there, but we have to, let's live in a way, to witness to others our deep trust in God, let our deep trust in the Lord create a spirit of generosity within us that we can not only give back to him, but bless those around us. So thank you for joining me today. I hope this was helpful again. It was hearing the readings that worked at church this past Sunday really kind of inspired me. It gets my brain going with so many of these things, and I just Yes, yes, and it's just my some of my most favorite examples and stories from from the Bible, because all of this, it's all about our hearts. It's all about our hearts. Lord, create in me a new heart, so that we can have a deep trust in you and we can be generous to others. So thank you for joining me today. I hope this has been helpful. God bless. Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time, please click Subscribe on your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day. You.