Читать книгу Insights: Money - William Barclay - Страница 7

Publisher’s Introduction

One of the most famous stories in the Bible concerns a poor widow who donated the last of her pennies to the Temple. We know that Jesus told his disciples that the widow’s contribution was greater than that of the wealthy people, as she gave all that she had. It’s one of those stories we learn as children – so familiar that the lessons are overlooked.

William Barclay’s great gift as a writer is to bring stories like this to life by explaining the fascinating detail of the story and by clearly spelling out the many lessons to be learned.

In this story, Barclay identifies three lessons. First of all, real giving must be sacrificial: it must hurt. ‘It may well be a sign of the decadence of the Church and the failure of our Christianity that gifts have to be coaxed out of church people, and that often they will not give at all unless they get something back in the way of entertainment or of goods.’ The second lesson to be learned is that real giving has a certain recklessness about it. The widow could have kept her last coin. ‘Somehow,’ writes Barclay, ‘there is nearly always something we hold back. We rarely make the final sacrifice.’ And the third lesson from the story is that the person praised by Jesus as the epitome of generosity was a person who gave a gift of so little monetary value: ‘if we put all that we have and are at his disposal, he can do things with it and with us that are beyond our imagination.’

Readers may find the lessons in this book – on money, wealth and possessions – unsettling and shocking. They are hard-hitting lessons as they apply to our lives today. But William Barclay gives us the courage to be had from understanding the truth. Money cannot buy your character, or your relationships, or your values. Insights: Money certainly reveals some uncomfortable truths, but it also helps you to see life from a different perspective.

If you are inspired by Barclay’s insights on money, wealth and possessions, you may wish to explore how the passages in this book are related to the rest of the New Testament. You can read more in the New Daily Study Bible series, in the following volumes: Matthew; Mark; Luke; Acts; Corinthians; Timothy, Titus and Philemon; and James and Peter. These volumes, and the rest of the series, are available from Saint Andrew Press.