Christian Reflection and Prayer

“He spent the night there, and from what he had
with him he selected a gift for his brother Esau:
two hundred female goats and twenty male goats,
two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty female
camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls,
and twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.”
Genesis 32:13–15

There was once a man who learned a valuable
lesson while waiting in an airport. The man had
checked his bags, bought himself a snack and a
magazine, and sat down to wait. As he opened his
magazine and reached for a cookie, he was
surprised to find another hand in the bag. The
woman sitting next to him was eating his food!

He was too polite to say anything and so he kept
quiet even though the woman continued to help
herself to his snack. She didn’t even leave him the
last cookie – instead, she broke it in half, smiled,
and kept half for herself. How rude! Just then, the
man’s flight was called. As he prepared to board
the plane, he opened up his bag to get his boarding
pass – and found his bag of cookies, unopened and
untouched. He had been eating the woman’s cookies
all along, while she had kindly shared!

There are many lessons to be learned from this story.
One of them is that knowing who the owner is makes
all of the difference! If we see ourselves as the true
owners of our assets, then we may resist sharing
them with God – and others. But when we realize that
everything belongs to Him, we will jump at the
opportunity to share.

With prayers for shalom, peace,
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein