“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).<\/p>\n
There is an old story that goes like this:<\/p>\n
An unusual tree grew outside the gates of a desert city in the Middle East. It was an old tree, a landmark as a matter of fact. It seemed to have been touched by the finger of God, for it bore fruit perpetually.<\/p>\n
Despite its old age, its limbs were constantly laden with fruit.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of passersby refreshed themselves from the tree as it never failed to give freely.<\/p>\n
But then a greedy merchant purchased the property on which the tree grew. He saw hundreds of travelers “robbing” his tree, and he built a high fence around it. Travelers pleaded, “Share with us.” The merchant quoted in return, “It is my tree, my fruit, bought with my money.” And a strange thing happened: the old tree died! What had happened? The law of giving, as predictable as the law of gravity, had expressed its immutable principle: when a tree stops giving, it stops bearing, and it dies.<\/p>\n
Yes, this story illustrates well the law of give-and-receive. And when I think of how much I take from God’s world, I bow in guilt at how little I give to His work. “But this I say, He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly” (2 Corinthians 9:6).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). There is an old story that goes like this: An unusual tree grew outside the gates of a desert city in the Middle East. It was an old tree, a landmark as a matter of fact. It seemed to have been touched by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2133,2132,379,2134],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}