go big.

Our church has been helping a young mother recently diagnosed with stomach cancer. They discovered the cancer while she was pregnant, and started chemotherapy as soon as she had delivered her son. He's less than two months old now, and she has a 3-year-old daughter as well. She's a Navy nurse with very little money, and hardly any support system in this area.

Among other things, she needs formula for the baby. So, on my last trip to buy groceries for myself, I bought two cans of formula and walked away feeling proud of my generosity. Until I found out a few days ago that the baby goes through one can of formula in just three days, and the $50 I spent won't even last them a week.

As I was thinking about this yesterday, God told me to buy more, and gave me a specific amount. And frankly, its an amount that hurts a bit.

I'm sharing this not to congratulate myself, but as background for the things that I've been thinking about lately. I think we have tendency to just give a little, and to say, that's enough. I started thinking of other ways to help this woman, and though, "maybe those are too big, too much."

Until God reminded me, that when he wants to communicate something, he often does it in a big way. When he freed the nation of Israel from slavery in Egypt, he didn't just whisk them away in the middle of the night, he held back a wall of water, then sent their pursuers drowning in the Red Sea. When he told Joshua to take the city of Jericho, he didn't make the Israelite army just strong enough to win, he told them to sing his praises as they circled the city, then he sent the walls just crashing right to the ground.

And when he put in motion his plan to save us, he didn't just send his son to die, but to experience the most horrific, tortuous death man could come up with.

With God as our model, why shouldn't we do things to the extreme? Give big, love big, dream big, sacrifice big?