The Farmer Who Opened the Floodgates

Margaret Chen had farmed forty acres outside Salinas, California, for nineteen years. She knew the math of survival — every bushel counted, every dollar stretched thin across seed, diesel, and equipment loans. So when her pastor challenged the congregation to tithe for ninety days, Margaret's stomach knotted. Ten percent of her income meant skipping a tractor payment. It meant trusting someone else with money she had already mentally spent.

She started anyway. The first month, nothing changed. The second month, a hailstorm wiped out her neighbor's strawberry crop but veered north of her fields by two hundred yards. The third month, a restaurant chain in San Francisco called — they wanted to buy her heirloom tomatoes at premium prices, every week, indefinitely. By December, Margaret had given away more money than any year prior and somehow finished the year with more in savings than she had started with.

"I cannot explain the math," she told her small group that winter, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. "It doesn't add on paper. But God doesn't work on paper."

Malachi 3:10 is the only place in all of Scripture where the Almighty invites His people to test Him. "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse," He says, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven." Margaret discovered what generations of faithful givers have learned — you cannot outgive a God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. The floodgates open not because we earn them, but because He is faithful.