This pledge Sunday I am reminded of a story. A woman is struck by a bus on a busy street. She lies on the sidewalk seriously injured. A crowd gathers. “A priest!”, she gasps, “Someone get me a priest!”
A policeman scans the crowd and yells, “A priest, please hurry!”
Out of the crowd steps a little Jewish man and he said, “Officer, I am not a priest but I have lived behind a parish for over 50 years and every night I over hear their services. I can recall much of what I have heard and maybe I can be of some comfort to this woman.”
The policeman is glad to have someone, anyone step forward. He bends down, holds the hand of the woman and gently and calmly says, “B-8, N-23, G-54, I-7”.

What we trust and what people observe comes to mind.
The following article is based on a sermon by missionary Del Tarr who served fourteen years in West Africa . His story points out the price some people pay to sow the seed of the gospel in hard soil…
“I was always perplexed by Psalm 126. In the this place, all the moisture comes in a four month period: May, June, July, and August. After that, not a drop of rain falls for eight months. The ground cracks from dryness, and so do your hands and feet. The winds of the Sahara pick up the dust and throw it thousands of feet into the air. It then comes slowly drifting across West Africa as a fine grit. It gets inside your mouth. It gets inside your watch and stops it. The year’s food, of course, must all be grown in those four months. People grow sorghum or milo in small fields.
October and November…these are beautiful months. The granaries are full — the harvest has come. People sing and dance. They eat two meals a day. The sorghum is ground between two stones to make flour and then a mush with the consistency of yesterday’s Cream of Wheat. The sticky mush is eaten hot; they roll it into little balls between their fingers, drop it into a bit of sauce and then pop it into their mouths. The meal lies heavy on their stomachs so they can sleep.
December comes, and the granaries start to recede. Many families omit the morning meal. Certainly, by January not one family in fifty is still eating two meals a day.
By February, the evening meal diminishes. The meal shrinks even more during March and children succumb to sickness. You don’t stay well on half a meal a day.
April is the month that haunts my memory. In it you hear the babies crying in the twilight. Most of the days are passed with only an evening cup of gruel. Then, inevitably, it happens. A six or seven-year-old boy comes running to his father one day with sudden excitement. “Daddy! Daddy! We’ve got grain!” he shouts. “Son, you know we haven’t had grain for weeks.” “Yes, we have!” the boy insists. “Out in the hut where we keep the goats — there’s a leather sack hanging up on the wall — I reached up and put my hand down in there — Daddy, there’s grain in there! Give it to Mommy so she can make flour, and tonight our tummies can sleep! “The father stands motionless. “Son, we can’t do that,” he softly explains. “That’s next year’s seed grain. It’s the only thing between us and starvation. We’re waiting for the rains, and then we must use it.”
The rains finally arrive in May, and when they do the young boy watches as his father takes the sack from the wall and does the most unreasonable thing imaginable. Instead of feeding his desperately weakened family, he goes to the field and with tears streaming down his face, he takes the precious seed and throws it away. He scatters it in the dirt! Why? Because he believes in the harvest.
The seed is his; he owns it. He can do anything with it he wants. The act of sowing it hurts so much that he cries. But as the African pastors say when they preach on Psalm 126, “Brother and sisters, this is God’s law of the harvest. Don’t expect to rejoice later on unless you have been willing to sow in tears.” And I want to ask you: How much would it cost you to sow in tears? I don’t mean just giving God something from your abundance, but finding a way to say, “I believe in the harvest, and therefore I will give what makes no sense. The world would call me unreasonable to do this — but I must sow regardless, in order that I may someday celebrate with songs of joy.” Copyright Leadership, 1983.
But he fought through tears and fears because he believed in the harvest.
I believe in what God can do. Generosity is a sign of that trust. Do you believe in the harvest? We sow in tears and reap in joy, Psalm 126 reminds us.
This time of year, we think so much about giving. There is the giving thanks or the thanksgiving. There are gifts we give at Christmas. Do not panic, for you still have plenty of time to purchase your Christmas gifts. If I get a gift from someone, I feel I must immediately get on Amazon and buy something for that person. But is that really a gift or an exchange? A true gift does not expect anything in return.
Unconditional, yes, there are also scriptures that remind us when we respond in love, it shows in public. There are visible fruits. The fruit of the spirit includes generosity.
Sometimes what we refrain- from doing – returns to us, as the gospel states, do not judge and you will not be judged, do not condemn and you will not be condemned.
And what we give returns… give and you will receive, pressed down, shaken together, running over, fall in your lap – measure you give is the measure you get back.
The Book of James reminds us: all generous, perfect gifts come from God. Do you believe in the harvest?
Our family picks up on our anxiety. A pastor told a story about being a spokesperson at church conferences about God’s generosity and stewardship. One day he got a new phone and there was a message: “God provides” He is not a magic kind of faith person. But it was just what he needed to hear. He pondered where this message came, was it the cloud? Was it God? Finally, his teenage daughter asked if he got her message.
“Oh, that was from you. Why did you send that particular message to me?” She said, “Because that is the thing I have the hardest time believing.”
He thought, “step, my child, into this anxiety I have prepared for you.” Here he was traipsing about the country pontificating on God’s generosity and he was living in such a way that his children had their doubts.
Peter Bohler told John Wesley, preach faith until you believe it then preach it because you believe it.
But he fought through tears and fears because he believed in the harvest.
We fight through tears and fears because we believe in the harvest. We are not living in such dire straights as the missionary did in West Africa. Yet, as the soil was hard from drought, there is a drought going on in the church and in faith communities. There is a great deal of hardness of heart in our world perhaps even in families. Yet, our loved ones are watching us. Will we trust the harvest? Give and you will receive abundant blessings.
The fruit of the spirit includes generosity. Do you believe in the harvest?