A rich old miser visited a rabbi one day.  The rabbi took him to a window and asked him what he saw.

“Men, women and children,” the miser replied.

Then the rabbi took him to a mirror, and asked him what he saw.  “I see myself,” the miser responded.

“Behold,” said the rabbi, “in the window there is glass, and in the mirror there is glass.  But the glass of the mirror is coated with silver, and no sooner is silver added than you cease to see others and see only yourself.”

There is a spiritual discipline to stewardship that involves something akin to looking through a mirror.  So often when we give, we see only ourselves.  We feel proud if we’ve given what we consider a lot, and ashamed if we feel we’ve not given enough.

Neither response is truly spiritual.  We do not become spiritual givers until we can look through the mirror, until we do not see ourselves at all. We do not become spiritual givers until we can look through the mirror and see there a different world, a different way of believing and doing and being – until we see God.