"They Can't Afford To" Needs to Be Replaced With "They Can't Afford Not To"

One reason the Lord illustrates doctrines with the most extreme circumstances is to eliminate excuses. If the Lord expects even the poorest widow to pay her mite, where does that leave all others who find that it is not convenient or easy to sacrifice?

No bishop, no missionary should ever hesitate or lack the faith to teach the law of tithing to the poor. The sentiment of “They can’t afford to” needs to be replaced with “They can’t afford not to.”

One of the first things a bishop must do to help the needy is ask them to pay their tithing. Like the widow, if a destitute family is faced with the decision of paying their tithing or eating, they should pay their tithing. The bishop can help them with their food and other basic needs until they become self-reliant.... the most important assistance comes from God, not from man. The prophet wanted to help them unlock the windows of heaven as promised by the Lord in the book of Malachi (see Mal. 3:10; Mosiah 2:24).

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When serving a meal, it is much easier to set one more plate at the beginning of the meal than it is to find food for a latecomer once the meal is over and the food has been served. Likewise, isn’t it actually easier to give the Lord the firstlings or the firstfruits than it is to hope that there are sufficient “leftovers” for Him? As the founder of our feast, shouldn’tHe be the guest of honor, the first to be served?

April 2005 :Tithing—A Commandment Even For The Destitute"  Lynn G. Robbins

Faith Isn't Tested So Much When the Cupboard Is Full As When It Is Bare

The story of the widow of Zarephath is an example of extreme poverty used to teach the doctrine that mercy cannot rob sacrifice any more than it can rob justice. In fact, the truer measure of sacrifice isn’t so much what one gives to sacrifice as what one sacrifices to give (see Mark 12:43). Faith isn’t tested so much when the cupboard is full as when it is bare. In these defining moments, the crisis doesn’t create one’s character—it reveals it. The crisis is the test.

April 2005 :Tithing—A Commandment Even For The Destitute"  Lynn G. Robbins

As With Any Selfish or Natural Man -- Sacrifice Is Never Convenient.

n Charles Dickens’s timeless classic A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit hoped to spend Christmas Day with his family. “‘If quite convenient, Sir,’” he asked his employer, Mr. Scrooge.

“‘It’s not convenient,’ said Scrooge, ‘and it’s not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you’d think yourself ill used.’ …

“‘And yet,’ said Scrooge, ‘you don’t think me ill-used, when I pay a day’s wages for no work.’

“The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

“‘A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!’ said Scrooge.” ¹

For Scrooge—as with any selfish, or “natural,” man—sacrifice is never convenient.

 April 2005 :Tithing—A Commandment Even For The Destitute"  Lynn G. Robbins

On Your Wedding Day the Very Best Gift You Can Give Your Eternal Companion Is Your Very Best Self!

In matters of human intimacy, you must wait! You must wait until you can give everything, and you cannot give everything until you are legally and lawfully married. To give illicitly that which is not yours to give (remember, “you are not your own”) and to give only part of that which cannot be followed with the gift of your whole self is emotional Russian roulette. If you persist in pursuing physical satisfaction without the sanction of heaven, you run the terrible risk of such spiritual, psychic damage that you may undermine both your longing for physical intimacyand your ability to give wholehearted devotion to a later, truer love. You may come to that truer moment of ordained love, of real union, only to discover to your horror that what you should have saved you have spent, and that only God’s grace can recover the piecemeal dissipation of the virtue you so casually gave away. On your wedding day the very best gift you can give your eternal companion is your very best self—clean and pure and worthy of such purity in return.

Jeffrey R. Holland, Personal Purity, October 2008