Foolish Generosity

Proper use of money has been on the mind a lot.
Mom loves me so she made and mailed cookies.  Don't get me wrong.  The cookies were great, but... shipping cost $8.75.  That could have paid for two more batches of cookies.  To be more efficient with her giving she could just Paypal me all that money and email me the recipe, then I could make them myself and have 3 times as much cookie love right?!
I think we all know that would kind of defeat the point.  She didn't send those cookies in order for me to experience the maximum amount of delicious cookie possible (oatmeal cookies with white chocolate chips!).  She sent them because she loves me and wanted me to feel her love despite being so far away.  And yes, it worked.  I felt quite loved when I came home and found them on my doorstep :) :) :D
Shipping cookies almost 600 miles is a mildly extravagant way to communicate love.  It's the extravagance that carries the important part.  When God works in us and through us, he wants to communicate his love to us, and he also wants to communicate his love through us to others.  In both cases he likes to do so extravagantly.  It's not always the most financially efficient or "responsible" way, but God has no shortage of resources so that's not something he has to concern himself with.
When we feed the poor, we could do so by buying bread and peanut butter in bulk, whipping up a bunch of sandwiches and then handing them out.  Alternatively we could take a homeless man out to eat.  Both approaches get the job done.  One approach is financially responsible, while the other is not.  One approach (the financially irresponsible one if it wasn't clear), shows extravagant love, while the other does not.  Of course with the sandwiches you could impact more lives with the same amount of money, but at the same time, remember God has money, and when you follow his direction to take a homeless man out to eat, God will bless that and provide the means to make it happen again.
Maybe this addresses the concern of my previous post.  Spend our money extravagantly on the pleasure of serving God, and because it is not a zero sum game, God can multiply our efforts and allow large impact.
hmm.. sorry, mind is spinning wildly so forgive the chaos.  Maybe it's like this:

$10 feeds 2 people normally, or 1 person + extravagant love.  I have $10 so the choice is between impacting 1 person or 2.
Wrong.
Because maybe, when I choose the 1, God redirects $50 my way so that I can actually impact 6 people extravagantly.

Sooo... I think the trick is being aware that this can happen.  God likes operating like this. Most importantly though, just obey.  Don't question God when he defies common sense and says to just impact the 1 because you never know what he has up his sleeve.