The Rice Farmer
Illustrates Faithfulness in Adversity
There’s a story about a rice farmer who saved his entire village. From his hilltop farm, he felt the quake and saw the ocean swiftly crouch back from the shoreline, ready to leap into a tidal wave. Down below he saw his neighbors working the fields that would soon be flooded. What could he do? There was not much time.
Taking a torch, he set his rice barn, his bountiful harvest, on fire. Seeing the smoke on top of the hill, the neighbors below ran up to help him. Then from their safety perch, they saw the tidal wave’s sweeping force flood the fields they had just left. Instantly they knew not only who had saved them, but also what their salvation had cost their benefactor. The village later erected a memorial to the memory of the farmer on the hilltop. It said, “He gave us all he had, and he gave it gladly.”
Should heaven decide to build a monument of your giving today, what would it say? Heaven rejoices more in the attitude of our giving than in the quantity.
By Fylvia Fowler Kline. Tithe and Offerings Readings 2002 (March 2, 2002), p. 17. General Conference Stewardship Ministries. https://stewardship.adventist.org/2002-the-attitude-of-giving.pdf
