What God Does With a Little: Generosity, Faithfulness, and the Long View

I grew up in a generous family. That might surprise you if you heard the rest of the sentence — we didn’t always have a lot. At least from where I stood as a kid, it felt like we were often just getting by, scraping through lean seasons until things finally eased up in my late adolescence. But my parents were giving people. Not with money so much — there wasn’t always enough of that to give — but with something rarer and harder to part with: room.

We almost always had someone living with us. A friend from high school whose parents divorced, whose dad hit the road and lived out of his truck, whose mom took a job as a live-in maid and left him to figure life out at sixteen. Three different cousins at different points, each one going through something hard, each one needing a landing place. My aunt and uncle moved in for six months while my dad helped set my uncle up with a family business — something he could pass on, something that would sustain his family. We didn’t have a lot, but we got by, and apparently my parents decided that getting by was enough to share.

I didn’t fully understand what I was watching back then. I do now.

When I got out on my own, I had to discover generosity for myself — personally, spiritually. It wasn’t handed to me like a family heirloom. My wife was the one who really taught me the discipline of tithing when we set up home together. And over the years, it stopped feeling like a discipline and started feeling like a joy. It’s like running. I started running for exercise — out of obligation, honestly — but somewhere along the way I fell in love with it. It became part of my daily rhythm. Something I needed to have a good day. Generosity has done the same thing. It has become less about the amount and more about the posture of the heart behind it.

That shift matters more than we usually admit.

Fifty-Seven Cents and a Little Girl’s Dream

In 1886, a little girl named Hattie May Wiatt lived near a small Baptist church in Philadelphia. The church was so crowded that tickets of admission were sometimes handed out weeks in advance. One Sunday morning, Hattie showed up at the gate with her books and a small contribution, unable to get inside. The pastor, Russell Conwell, spotted her standing there — uncertain, a little afraid — and did something simple. He lifted her up onto his shoulder and carried her through the crowd, finding her a chair in a quiet corner of the Sunday school room.

Walking home from church the next morning, Conwell passed Hattie on the street and made her a promise, half-formed in his own mind at the time: one day, he told her, they’d have a building large enough for every child who wanted to come.

Hattie took him seriously. He barely remembered saying it.

Not long after, Hattie became ill — and died. She was seven years old. At the funeral, her mother pressed a small cloth bag into Conwell’s hands. Inside was fifty-seven cents — every penny Hattie had been quietly saving as her contribution towards securing another building for the children. Conwell was undone.

What looked like an ending was, somehow, the beginning.

He took the coins back to his congregation and told them the story. He converted the fifty-seven cents into individual pennies and offered them for sale. The congregation raised $250. Fifty-four of the original pennies were returned to him and later framed and put on display. The $250 was itself converted to pennies and sold again. The “Wiatt Mite Society” was formed — named for the little girl — and the multiplying began in earnest.

That first $250 purchased a nearby house. In that house, the first classes of what would become Temple University were held. The lot on which the Baptist Temple was later built — purchased for $25,000 — was secured with 54 cents as the first payment, accepted by the landowner himself. Thousands of sick people were treated at the Samaritan Hospital, founded by that same congregation. By 1912, when Conwell shared the story in a sermon, nearly 80,000 young people had passed through the halls of Temple University. Over 2,000 men and women went into ministry.

All of it — tracing back to fifty-seven cents and a little girl’s quiet, faithful dream.

Conwell said it plainly in his 1912 sermon: “Think of it — two thousand people preaching the Gospel because Hattie May Wiatt invested her 54 cents.”

She was seven years old. She never saw any of it.

Barb and the Pretzel Jar

Stories like that feel safely historical — until you realize you’ve met someone like that.

I have. Her name was Barb.

When I met her, Barb was a retired grandmother in her seventies — single, living in a modest townhouse, working days at a Dairy Queen. That’s not a typo. It’s a job that typically belongs to teenagers and college students. She didn’t complain about it. She showed up, served people ice cream with a smile, and collected her tips — mostly loose change.

She had also volunteered to run a snack shop for our youth ministry. While kids poured in between school, sports, band practice, and youth group, Barb stood behind a grill and made them burgers. Just so they’d have something to eat. Just so they’d feel taken care of.

One day she called and asked me to come by her house. When I got there, she pointed to a large pretzel jar in her closet. I picked it up. It was heavy. Inside was over $400 in coins — tips she had collected over months, a few at a time. “Mike,” she said, “this is for the youth center. For the renovation.”

She did it again a couple of months later, and again, and again.

A few years later, Barb called once more. She had fallen at a local store and broken several bones. The store’s insurance had settled with her. I assumed she was calling to share the news. Instead, she said: “The Lord told me to give it to the youth ministry to buy a van.”

She gave away her settlement. So the teenagers could get around.

I spoke at Barb’s funeral a couple of years ago. Standing there, trying to find words worthy of her life, I thought about what she had actually given. Not just the money — though that was remarkable enough. She had given her evenings. Her energy. Her presence. She had given herself to a group of teenagers who weren’t her grandchildren, in a season of life when no one would have blamed her for staying home.

In my book, Barb was a rock star.

And honestly? I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s among the first to greet me when I get there — surrounded by teenagers whose lives were quietly, permanently shaped by a grandmother who showed up with a grill and a pretzel jar full of quarters. Barb never tried to be impressive. She simply offered what she had.

The Multiplication Principle

There’s a moment in the Gospels that I keep coming back to. A young boy offers five loaves and two fish to Jesus — a laughably small amount given the crowd of five thousand hungry people surrounding them. The disciples are skeptical. Jesus is not. He takes what the boy has, gives thanks, breaks it, and distributes it. And it’s enough. More than enough.

Russell Conwell saw the same thing in Hattie May Wiatt. “When that little lad brought five loaves and two small fishes to be used of Christ for His great work,” he said, “it was precisely the same thing that Hattie May Wiatt did when she brought her 57 cents.”

This is the pattern. When we place what we have into God’s hands with a sincere heart, He does with it what no spreadsheet could forecast.

But here’s what I want to say carefully: this is not just a story about money.

Hattie gave money — yes. Barb gave money — yes. But what they really gave was their hearts. Their time. Their willingness to be used. The money was real, but the love behind it was the actual seed. That’s what God multiplies — not just our dollars, but our devotion. Not just what’s in our wallets, but what we lay down willingly.

Generosity, at its core, is a posture of the heart that says: What I have is not ultimately mine, and I trust the One who gave it to me to do more with it than I ever could.

That posture, when it becomes a rhythm — like tithing, like running — stops feeling like sacrifice and starts feeling like freedom.

What Will You Leave Behind?

Hattie May Wiatt didn’t know she was planting a university. Barb didn’t know she was changing the trajectory of teenagers who would grow up to raise families and lead lives quietly shaped by a woman who made them burgers and prayed for them.

We rarely know what we’re planting when we plant it.

But God does.

And He has a long, beautiful history of taking the seeds we sow in faith — however small, however ordinary — and growing things from them that we won’t fully see until we’re standing on the other side.

If you’re leading a church or ministry, pay attention to the Hatties and the Barbs in your congregation. Never overlook the small givers. Never measure impact only by large checks or impressive pledges.

The kingdom often moves forward on quarters collected in pretzel jars — on Tuesday evenings given away, on settlements handed over with a quiet smile.

These are the seeds that outlast us.

So give — not only when it’s easy, but precisely when it costs you. Give money, yes. But give yourself too. Give the way my parents gave — not from abundance, but from a quiet decision that there is enough to share.

You may never see what grows.

But Someone will.

And He wastes nothing.

Bibliography:

Sermon- “The History of Fifty-Seven Cents” by Russell H. Conwell, Sunday Morning, December 1, 1912 — is archived and publicly available at: https://library.temple.edu/webpages/the-history-of-fifty-seven-cents)