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Broke and abundant by Laura Johnson

I heard God speak to me on a brisk fall day in October last year. I was driving to the local recycling center to scrounge up enough pennies to get a gallon of gas for my car that was running on fumes. I knew this voice wasn’t my own (although it was in my head) because I heard this sentence interrupt whatever my mind was thinking at the time.

God said, “Did you think I would let you starve?” And I just broke down, bawling so hard I could barely see the road, because that was apparently what I did think. I was in a place in my life when I felt so low, so helpless. I was crying every day. Coming home every day from work and feeling nothing because I couldn’t go anywhere or enjoy anything since I didn’t have the means to do so. I had nothing. Or that’s how it felt.

The miracle
What sparked the occurrence on the road that October day was that I had a few people over the night before. I agreed to have a little gathering a month earlier—at a time when I was more financially stable (as in my bank account contained more than $5). While the dinner was going to be a potluck anyway, as the host, I wanted to be able to offer my guests a full spread. But that week was terrible. I had some dried spaghetti and peanut butter in my cupboard and some chicken in my freezer and that was it. I am not exaggerating.

The previous two days I ate only one meal. And here I was having a party. I felt I couldn’t cancel because my friends were so excited about it. With the $3 I had left in my checking account I went to the store to buy some guacamole and tortilla chips so I could at least offer something. I prayed (or cried out) to God to let this be OK—or everything to be OK. (Continued on next page.)

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. . . kindness is like a garden of blessings and almsgiving endures forever. (Sirach 40:16)

Somewhere along the way, I learned that when you invite guests to your home, you must clean until everything sparkles and serve more food than the guests could possibly eat. This can make the idea of inviting others' over intimidating enough to skip. It's expensive. It's hard. But then we find ourselves out of the practice of giving, sharing what we have, with little cultivated community.

I've also experienced a different model. One friend and I had an agreement: neither of us had to clean to have each other over. Then other friends showed my friend and me how to make something from what seems like nothing. We ate at a friend's place on a weeknight. Though the bowls were small, everyone actually had more than enough. Afterward, we picked a small brown bag of apples from the backyard tree and used them to make apple pies and apple crisp for 15 people on the weekend.

This second model is the one the Scripture points us toward—reaching out with kindness, sharing our gardens, cultivating friendship. As we share them, we recognize that we have more than we realized, more than enough to be thankful for.

This is the wisdom behind almsgiving, a practice of giving without expectation of something in return. Generosity may benefit another person, but even more, it benefits the giver. When we give, we remind ourselves that we have more than enough to share—even if by cultural standards, it seems like so little. Generosity changes our understanding of the current economic challenge so we can see it a new way. (Continued on next page.)