The Grain Merchant of Aleppo

There is an old practice in the spice markets of Aleppo that every merchant once knew. When a customer came to buy grain, the seller would scoop the measure full, then press it down with both palms — hard — compacting the loose kernels until the level dropped by a third. Then he would shake the container side to side, letting the grain settle into every gap and crevice. Then he would scoop again, filling it to the brim and beyond, until the wheat formed a golden mound that spilled over the edges and tumbled into the folds of the buyer's robe.

That is the image Jesus reaches for in Luke 6:38. Not a careful, leveled-off portion. Not the minimum. He describes a generosity so extravagant it cannot be contained.

Margaret Benson understood this. For thirty-one years she ran a soup kitchen on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, and she never once counted portions. "You cannot out-give God," she told every volunteer on their first day. "So stop trying to be efficient and start trying to be faithful." When Margaret died in 2014, over eight hundred people stood in the February cold outside her funeral. She had given with pressed-down, shaken-together, running-over hands — and the return poured back in ways no ledger could measure.

The measure you use, Jesus says, will be measured back to you. So open your hands wide. The God who fills every crevice will not be outdone.