23rd February 2025
"Test me... and see..."
Generosity builds Faith
We live in a capitalist consumer society, and our capitalist consumer society depends on a model of scarcity. When goods are scarce, consumers will pay more for them - whether they are last-minute train tickets, or tickets to the upcoming Oasis concerts. When goods are scarce, we tend to hoard what we have - remember the panic-buying of toilet roll at the start of the Covid pandemic?!
By contrast, God's economy depends on a model of generosity. As creatures, we receive life from our creator God as a gift. And scripture teaches that God has richly blessed us in creation with an abundance of all that we need. But it's hard to trust in the God who richly blesses when all around us the culture is encouraging us to compete, to hoard, to grab what we can.
In our reading from Malachi on Sunday morning, God calls out the people's scarcity economics. They are hoarding their wealth and, in the words of the prophet "robbing" God of what is rightfully his. Instead of bringing the best of their flocks, the first fruit of their crops, they are offering the leftovers - the sickly sheep and the damaged grain. And they are surprised, because God does not bless them.
God calls the people to repent of their scarcity economic model, to turn, literally, to a different way of being. "Bring the full tithe into the storehouse," he says. "Test me in this... and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room for it!" (Malachi 3:10) God encourages the people to test him - and to learn, through this simple act of trust, as their ancestors did many years earlier through the manna in the wilderness, that God will be faithful, God will provide.
I wonder where our places of scarcity are? Perhaps it's financial. There is little left over month by month, and the bills continue to go up. Or perhaps it's time. A combination of work, family commitments and church makes it hard to fit everything in. Or perhaps its capacity. So many people clamouring for our attention, and we just don't have the bandwidth to give any more.
I wonder what testing God in our place of scarcity might look like? I wonder what blessings God is longing to pour out, if only we were willing to "test him... and see"?
