the love of money...

I must confess I had always felt a bit uncomfortable about money. To utter "God" and "money" in the same sentence, just seemed so unholy, and crass, somehow.

I, in my wisdom, imagined God had no interest in money. He would see it as something of this world, and He was far above that. He didn't need money to do His work, He could find ways around it. He is God, after all!!

Every Sunday, as the collection bowl got passed around, I would obligingly empty out the coins in my purse.

I would frown in DH's direction, as he put in $20 notes.

Didn't he know that we had bills to pay?!

Little did I know....

God had a lesson on the way for me.

It started like this.

The Tongan church traditionally does a misinale, once a year, where you get together as much money as you possibly can, and put it into the treasury.

Every year, we planned to stash money away every week, so that when misinale day came around, we would have a generous amount to put in.

But every year, car regos needed paying, and everything cost more than we budgeted for (you know how it goes!), and by the time misinale came around, we were lucky to scrape $300 together.

Then the church brought in an envelope system where you put your offering in the envelope every week, anonymously, and put it in the collection.

DH declared that we would put in $80 per week.

$80 per week!!!!

My mind ran amuk with thoughts of all the groceries I could buy with $80 every week.

I figured that since he often sent money home to his family in Tonga, surely that could be counted towards the $80 per week?!

That seemed logical to me.

But no. DH would have none of it...

I eventually agreed to $80 p/w, as long as he would quit smoking, which he did.

And so we began.

Some weeks, I put the envelope in, not knowing how we would cover all our bills.

But somehow we managed.

Then something interesting happened.

DH and I both got our tax returns back, much more than we expected.

Then my work announced they were going to outsource some jobs, and would be looking at redundancies. This might sound like bad news, but I'd already decided I would be leaving at the end of the year to start my own business anyway.

I had only been working there for 3 years, so didnt expect a very big redundancy, but because I put my hand up and went voluntarily, which they were offering extra incentives for, I ended up with a redundancy payment of over $16,000. (It turned out that everyone in my section was later made redundant, anyway. Minus the $7000 incentive that I got for going voluntarily.)

This payout helped me start up a business, and went towards paying for our wedding in 2008 (we had been wanting to get married for a couple of years, but could never seem to come up with the money).

And that's not all!

DH got a phone call from his uncle living in Sydney, insisting that he come up and collect some paperwork. DH tried to get out of it, thinking what a hassle it was, but eventually agreed, and took the bus up to Sydney for the day.

His uncle gave him a big envelope, and DH had a look inside, but it was full of big words that he couldn't understand, so shoved it in his bag, and brought it back home to me.

After I started reading it, I realised it was his uncle's will. I read on a bit further, and got a shock, when I realised that he was leaving everything he owned to DH.

I started to understand, in my heart of hearts, that God was teaching me a very powerful lesson, here.

I had given a little (in the whole scheme of things...). And not only that, I had given it ungraciously.

But God gave me something far, far greater, in return.

Whatever I have to give, will only be miniscule, in comparison to what God has given me.

Whether it's money, time or talents, it was all lent to me by God, anyway.

When my husband suggested we raise our offering to $100 per week, I agreed.

These days, we put our money in the envelope first, before we pay anything else.

When I put it into the collection bowl, I think how small my offering is, compared with the greatness of God, and my heart zings with gratitude for all that I have...

And all that He has seen fit to teach me.