“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 69
“There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty” (Prov. 11:24).
God has placed us in the world in a such a way as to bless us. His blessing overflows, and He gives and gives and gives. One of His purposes in doing this is to give us something to imitate. When we give (as He has given to us), He sees that we are “getting” the lesson, and so He bestows more on us. God gives to us so that we might give, and we ought to give in order to get, in order that we might give again. If we retain what we have been given, hording it, then what we have withers away.
Now of course, there are misers who do appear (for a time) to accumulate wealth. And there are spendthrifts who throw money out the windows, and it does not come back to them again. At issue is whether we are imitating God, whether we are being open-handed as He is. If we are, then He blesses. This is one of the central lessons that a Christian businessman must learn. John Bunyan once put it this way: “There was a man, some thought him mad, the more he gave, the more he had.”