Gave All He Had

I once heard the story of a rice farmer who saved an entire village from destruction. From his hilltop farm, he felt the quake and saw the distant ocean swiftly withdraw from the old shoreline, like some prodigious animal crouching back for a leap. He knew that the leap would be a tidal wave. In the valley below, he saw his neighbors working low fields that would soon be flooded. They must run quickly to his hilltop or they would all die. His rice barns were dry as tinder. So with a torch, he set fire to his barns and soon the fire goon started ringing. His neighbors saw the smoke and rushed to help him. Then from their safe perch, they saw the tidal wave wash over the fields they had just left. In a flash, they knew not only who had saved them but what their salvation had cost their benefactor. They later erected a monument to his memory bearing the motto, "He gave us all he had, and gave gladly." I think the same words could be said of our heavenly Father and the gift of his only begotten Son!