The Farmer Who Planted His Last Seed

In the spring of 1934, outside Broken Bow, Nebraska, Raymond Holt stood in his barn holding a burlap sack — the last forty pounds of winter wheat seed his family owned. Two years of drought had turned his fields to dust. His wife, Clara, had already sold her mother's china to keep the children fed.

Every instinct told him to grind that wheat into flour. Forty pounds meant weeks of bread for five hungry mouths. But Raymond carried the sack to the edge of his field, knelt in the cracked earth, and prayed a prayer so plain it barely qualified as one: "Lord, I'm trusting You with what we can't afford to give."

He planted every grain.

The rains came in June — not a drizzle, but deep, soaking storms that turned Custer County green for the first time in three seasons. By August, Raymond's forty pounds had multiplied into a harvest so abundant he filled his own granary and two he borrowed from neighbors. Clara said it looked like the sky had simply opened up.

That is the audacious invitation of Malachi 3:10. The LORD Almighty — the only time in all of Scripture God says "test Me" — asks His people to bring the whole tithe and then watch. Watch Him throw open the floodgates of heaven. Watch Him pour out blessing until there is no room to contain it. The God who commands generosity is the same God who refuses to be outgiven.