Jesus said in Luke 16:10 "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much."
I'm sure some of y'all read different translations, so you can find the variants here - but they all say the same thing. Trusted, righteous, faithful in little, trusted, righteous, faithful in much. And the opposite is true as well.
I was driving this morning and a memory blip came to me. I think the other I get the more my memories are more 'blips' than the full scene... 😏
It was from when I worked at Bubba's seafood shack in Orange Beach, AL. I started as a busboy, making minimum wage plus the tips from the servers I was assigned to. In the early 2000's, it was good money for a high school senior. 5.25/hr plus anywhere from $25-50 cash a night. After a while I got 'promoted' to waiter. I went from making 5.25/hr plus tips to 2.13/hr plus tips. It ended up being more per hour, and those paychecks for $0.38 were humorous to receive.
The catch was that as a server, you were required (by the IRS, and subsequently my restaurant management) to claim 8% of your sales as tips. If you've ever tipped a waiter less than 10% you either are a very unkind person, or that waiter vastly underperformed. It's the meme today that people ask for gratuity on everything, and I am a bit uncomfortable when the starting suggested gratuity is 20%, then 25% then 30%! I sheepishly will tip less than 20% sometimes, but I cannot recall ever tipping less than 10% for service.* (I of course have tipped less than 10% when the person cashing me out has done literally nothing other than ring up my item(s). Why ask for gratuity if you've just stood there?)
Back to Luke 16:10 and our Lord Jesus.
In restaurants, you were required to claim 8% of sales at tips, but seldom, if ever did you actually receive only 8% gratuity. You had to claim any Credit Card tips, as those are in the books, but all cash tips above 8% you could choose to not claim, as there was no way the IRS or anyone else could measure. It was even encouraged by those I worked with.
While the percent difference wasn't much - we could call it 'very little' - it was still an opportunity to be trusted, faithful, righteous. Full confession, I wasn't trustworthy, faithful, or righteous in those years.
And it got me to thinking - the words of Jesus sometimes can feel like rules, or laws, or goals - and sometimes they are - but He was God, which meant He knows how we are created, how we best function, and I have started seeing His words less as 'rules to follow' or '#squadgoals' but more as reality of how life actually is.
You know my job before waiting tables? (I'm sure you're itching to know - fine, I'll tell you) I was the supervisor of the arcade at The Track. And do you know there were opportunities there to be 'faithful, trustworthy, righteous' in little? And in fact, it was 'more little' ... littler? ... than my time at Bubba's waiting tables. Sometimes there would be coin jams in the machines. And there was the temptation to pocket the coins I unjammed. Double confession today - at times, I pocketed some change. Justifying it somehow in my mind that I could hold on to them as justifiable for my efforts.
Sorry to my managers at those establishments for my lack of trustworthiness. I doubt you'll ever read this, but legitimately, I look back and wish I could redo it.
The reality Jesus is speaking into the gospel of Luke (16:10) and the reality that we can identify in our own lives, is that when we are faithful with little, we will far more likely be faithful with much. But if we're unfaithful with little - quarters in the arcade machine, a few % of tips unclaimed - it is likely we'll be unfaithful with more.
One way we (Kris and I) have sought to be faithful in small in through our tithing. We see it as giving back what God has generously given us. Let me rephrase... the Scriptures tell us that when we give and offering/tithe, we are giving back. And in two passages (Hebrews 7, Genesis 14 - I had to google it, don't think I can recall these passages from memory), we see the model of giving a tenth of everything back to God. In the Genesis 14 story (which Paul refers to in Hebrews 7) Abraham gives to Melchizedek (high priest at the time) a tenth of what had just been taken from him.
If Abraham can give a tenth of what was already his, but was taken, and is now returned to its rightful 'owner' (this is our language, not God's), how can we, seeking to be faithful in the smallest of things, give a tenth of everything? For us it includes birthday gifts, pastor appreciation gifts, random acts of generosity that are measurable.
It can feel like a law, but if Jesus words are true about reality (they are), then if we are able to faithful in a $25 gift card on my birthday - yes, try and give $2.50 from a gift card back to God, it's a bit tedious - Kris and I will be far more likely to be faithful when we receive $2,500, or $25,000, or more.
This applies for us to money and wealth, but it really applies to everything. God's given us everything we have - breath, time, gifts, passions, friendships, neighbors, homes, trucks (I only have one, I'm speaking generally here people), etc. - what would it look like for us to be faithful, righteous, trustworthy in the smallest of things? And how true is it that it is a foreshadowing of us being faithful, righteous and trustworthy in bigger things?
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