Freely Give

...Freely ye have received, freely give.

 Matthew 10:8

My natural way of thinking disagrees with this verse.

My version would be...

Freely you have received,

Hoard, hold onto and store up!

Somehow giving away what has been given to me seems wasteful. It can be hard to give what I don't need to someone who does need it. That doesn't sound right, but it's true.

I am not talking about something made especially for me--like a meal or a cake. I don't give them away!

I mean the times we're given an abundance of something like clothes, fruit, vegetables or meat. We get given ABOVE what we need. Sometimes more than we know what to do with. It is so easy to hoard and store up these things.

And yet I've found SO many times, when I've chosen to share rather than hoard, I've been given all the more. I'll feel bad passing on some extra clothes in case we need them one day. But I'll let them go and pass them on, and what happens? More clothes are given to me. Sometimes within the day! It is always a reminder to me that I don't need to hoard. God doesn't expect me to hoard what He gives--He wants me to freely share.
One pastor explained that giving is like bouncing a ball. When you let go, it bounces and comes back to you.

I remember a story about two girls who made some delicious fudge. Just as they finished, they saw their neighbor walking up the drive. Quickly, they hid the fudge under the bed so they wouldn't have to offer a piece to their visitor. When the neighbor finally left, they rushed to the bed to enjoy some of their hoarded fudge. But the tray was empty. Their dog had eaten it all! How they wished they had shared!
One year we had a lot of strawberries in our vegie garden. One day we were picking some with the children and one of them said to me, "We better not pick too many or there'll be none left to pick next time." I had to explain that the more we pick, the more strawberries there are. If we don't pick them, they just get rotten. 
Picking strawberries is a little like sharing. The more we give away, the more we have.