The Open Window on Maple Street

Margaret Chen had kept the windows of her small bakery shut tight for three winters. Business was slow, flour prices climbed, and she calculated every cup of sugar down to the gram. When her pastor spoke about tithing, she shook her head. She could barely cover rent — how could she give ten percent away?

But one Tuesday morning, something shifted. Margaret pulled two hundred dollars from the register — her first real tithe — and dropped it in the offering box at Grace Community Church on her way to work. Her hands trembled the whole drive back.

She did not win the lottery. No mysterious check arrived in the mail. But that week, a woman named Diane wandered in asking if Margaret could supply pastries for her office of forty people. Then the middle school across the street called about catering their faculty breakfasts. By spring, Margaret had a waiting list.

"I don't think God was withholding from me," Margaret told her small group that April. "I think I was living with the windows nailed shut, and tithing was the first time I pried one open."

That is precisely the image the prophet Malachi uses. The Lord Almighty does not say, "Give, and I might bless you." He says, "Test Me in this." He invites us to open the window — to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse — and watch Him throw open the floodgates of heaven until there is not room enough to contain it. The God who asks us to give is the same God who loves to overflow.