![[Photo of a Scripture verse]](https://www.deankwilson.com/Blog_images/Luke_6_38.jpg)
| “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” |
| —Luke 6:38 |
Many years ago, soon after I had begun my career as a fire protection engineer working for an insurance company that insured large industrial facilities, I met a man who had worked in this field for nearly 20 years. He had accumulated a large number of books related to the field of fire science and engineering. He also had a collection of municipal and industrial fire alarm boxes.
On one occasion, he invited me to his home on a weekend. In the basement of his house he had a large area constructed with walls that held part of his collection of fire alarm boxes and other equipment related to fire protection. Each box had been restored to full working order and connected to a network of other boxes so that they all functioned just as they would have functioned when they were originally installed on telephone poles and pedestals throughout some community.
After he had carefully demonstrated the operation of each box and showed me the internal working mechanisms, he explained where he had obtained each box and how long it took him to restore it to working order. I was fascinated.
As our time together came to an end, he carried a large cardboard carton to my car. In it he had placed several of his “spare” boxes. “I thought you might like to start a collection of your own,” he said with a smile.
His generosity overwhelmed me. He had not only given me some boxes to start my own collection, he had given me some of his very best yet-restored boxes. He had given me above and beyond what anyone would have ever imagined.
That’s the way God is with those of us whom He has chosen to belong to Himself. As followers of Jesus, God gives us “abundantly more than we even dare ask or think,’ as the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 3:20. In fact, Jesus Himself said these words found in Luke 6:38:
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
As we are generous in giving of ourselves to others, God will bless us in ways we can’t even conceive. That’s something very worthwhile for us to remember at the beginning of this new day. God gives generously—enormously generously. And, that’s a good pattern for us to follow.
