Cultivating the Kingdom in Our Midst is a column that invites readers to look for “eye-level” signposts of God at work: shots of beauty that accost us during ordinary hours, scenes of “low art” that unexpectedly make us cry, details right in front of our faces that awaken us to the mercy that bears us up day after day. We’ll explore the underlying truths that are often first signaled by our tender silence or our wondering tears, the better to see the evidence of Christ’s present and approaching reign all around us.
This is for you.”
I heard the solemn voice before I turned and saw her: small, full-skirted, holding out a gold foil-wrapped coin that took up all the space on her palm.
It was the Sunday after St. Nicholas Day at church, and the children had each received a handful of chocolate coins after catechesis. I was standing in the back of the sanctuary talking with others after service when the little girl offered me her gift.
I took the coin with both hands, astonished at her generosity; I knew each child’s windfall was not large, and I must confess that I have never been easily parted from my chocolate holdings myself. I thanked her and slipped the coin into my purse, and she beamed.
It was only later, when I spotted the gold edge winking at me from that purse pocket at home, that I realized how remarkable that act really was. I have known this child from her earliest days; she has been through enough in her young childhood to justify the hoarding of any coins—actual, edible or metaphorical. But she is instead a benefactor and cheerful giver; from her small and liberal hand I have received not only chocolate but little bouquets of carefully picked dandelions and detailed crayon drawings as well.
She called to mind another little girl with a coin, one whom I met when I was young within the pages of A Little Princess.
On a drizzly, muddy winter day in London, Sara Crewe finds a trampled fourpenny piece in a gutter. Once the wealthiest student at her boarding school, she has become a penniless servant and errand girl due to the death of her father. In sodden clothes she hurries to a nearby bakery with the little silver piece and purchases four hot currant buns. The warm-hearted bakery owner, noting Sara’s thin face and tattered jacket, puts in two more for good measure; by all appearances the child could make quick work of all six.
But out on the front step of the shop, Sara pauses. Huddled by the wall is a beggar girl, with whom she exchanged a few words on the way in, and though it hardly seems such a thing could be possible, the girl is even wetter and colder and hungrier than Sara. Sara opens her bag and puts one of the buns in the girl’s lap.
Then two more.
The fourth is harder—her hand shakes—but she steels herself against the gnawing hunger and exhaustion in her own frail body and puts down the fifth.
Four pennies, five buns. We live in a world where resources are finite. The older I become, the more all the arenas of life seem to emphasize just how limited everything is: land, money, food, time, healthcare resources, college acceptance spots, financial aid, jobs. These are serious matters, we say rightly, convening at intervals to shake our heads over documents and tables. We legislate. We donate. We tax. We vie with other competitors and consumers and countries. Occasionally some cast a wistful eye back to childhood to say—if they were fortunate—we never worried about these things then; we didn’t know how good we had it.
But live a day through the eyes of a child, and we quickly discover that the finitude of goods and time has been true all along. Small folk are conscious of the last bite of dessert, the last inch of favorite crayon, the last leaf on the maple tree; many an inner war has been waged over whether or not to share a favorite toy that a friend might enjoy. One might argue that people who cannot drive and have no buying power know more about last things than their elders do.
Yet it is children who have consistently surprised me into remembering my calling. Their finest moments remind me that I have chosen to follow a God who directs me to do something radically different from what my instincts dictate. Give to those in need, to little ones, to the hungry, to the poor, to the thirsty, to the stranger, and to those in prison, Jesus says (Matthew 6:2-3, 10:42, 14:16, 19:21, 25:31-46).
The Son of God who took “the form of a bond-servant and [was] born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7, NASB) has upended the ladders of our human ambitions, telling us plainly that “whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43b-44, ESV).
Where scarcity is a reality—and in our world it often is—His followers are not to prioritize themselves and take the opportunity to fill their own coffers. We are loved by a God who laid down His life for us, John writes, and if we profess to follow Him we must walk as He did: “[w]e must in turn express our love by laying down our lives for those who are our brothers. But as for the well-to-do man who sees his brothers in want but shuts his eyes—and his heart—how could anyone believe that the love of God lives in him?” (I John 3:16b-18, Phillips).
It is not an easy way to live. It is even harder if the spirit of the age is a grasping one, with no pity for those who opt out of its winner-take-all contests.
But an etymological rabbit trail has been helping me re-image how our obedience to Christ in this matter can be sustained over a lifetime. The word “generous” has roots in the Latin generōsus (“of noble birth”) and the Middle French genereux (“charitable, munificent”)[1]. In the 1830s, another phrase linking the two ideas came into use. Noblesse oblige expresses the concept that “noble ancestry constrains one (to honorable behavior); privilege entails responsibility.”[2]. When used in its truest sense, laying aside the patronizing or condescending tones with which it could be wielded, noblesse oblige is quite simply a picture of duty: those in a position of nobility bear the onus of extending generosity and care to those who have less.
What I find intriguing about noblesse oblige is that it is tied not merely to material advantage but to a position of being noble. The Scriptural verse most commonly cited for noblesse oblige is Luke 12:48: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required” (CSV). Yet in Christ’s parable of the talents, the master says to two of his servants, “You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much” (Matt. 25:21,23 ESV)—as though the size of our wallets matters little in light of what He asks of us. No matter how much we have in our bank accounts, we have an imperishable inheritance (Eph. 1:11,14,18; I Peter 4:8; ESV) that both enables and obligates us to give as freely as the Son of God has given to us.
Sometimes I am certain of the glorious breadth and guarantee of that inheritance. At other times, it’s all I can do to simply remember my Lord’s commands, and to ask for His help to carry them out.
This latter frame of mind, in fact, is where we find Sara at the moment she is laying the buns in the child’s lap. Only a little while earlier in the story, Sara—who used to be called a princess by her schoolmates—makes up her mind to live by the noblesse oblige she once kept. “Whatever comes,” she vows, “cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside.”[3] Thus as she gives away her currant buns, Sara tells herself, “she is hungrier than I am. . . . She’s starving.”[4] In the absence of all outward evidence of wealth, she holds onto a nobility that speaks a truer word than the suffering that enshrouds her days.
I too need such reminders on gray days, when conditions without do not seem to match the flickering hope within. On Sundays the words of the Anglican liturgy at my church give me the sustenance of truths that I need to hear and confess as continually as I need food and drink, and in their deep simplicity I remember, like Sara, who I am and what I am called to do. Almighty God, we thank you for feeding us with the body and blood of your Son Jesus Christ. Through him we offer you our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice. Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory. Whatever comes.
Unbeknownst to Sara, as she walks slowly back to the school, breaking one small piece at a time off her bun to make it last, the fulfillment of her hope is very near. In a short while she will be gathered to a guardian who has been searching the literal world over to find her; the cold and the hunger will be things of the past. But Sara will still remember; she will go back to the bakery as a warmly clothed, rosy-faced patroness to ask the owner to keep a running tab open for any hungry children that might pass through. Noblesse oblige.
Perhaps, in a world where hope and faith are in short supply—a world with a Savior who is actively seeking those who desire to belong to Him—true noblesse oblige is simply “one beggar telling another beggar where to get food.”[5] A generosity that gives of itself without stinting to share the very Bread of Life.
Sara’s fairy tale is only a story, I know. It is the kind of story that affirms the faith of its protagonist, cheers the hearts of young readers, and ends in a long-awaited goodness—the kind that is easy for adults to scoff at and hard for them to believe.
But if this is so, then, my Lord: more and more, may I become like a child.
[1] Oxford English Dictionary, under “generous (adj.& n.), Etymology,” September 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/8483136558
[2] Oxford English Dictionary, under “noblesse oblige (phr.),” July 2023, https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=noblesse+oblige&tl=true.
[3] Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2015), 138.
[4] Burnett, Little Princess, 161.
[5] D.T. Niles, That They May Have Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951), 96.
The featured image is courtesy of Julie Jablonski and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.
Amy Baik Lee is a contributing writer for Cultivating Magazine and the Rabbit Room, a literary member of the Anselm Society Arts Guild, and the author of This Homeward Ache. A lifelong appreciator of stories, she holds an MA in English literature from the University of Virginia and still “does voices” when she reads aloud. She writes at a desk that looks out on a small cottage garden in Colorado, usually surrounded by her husband’s woodworking projects, her two daughters’ creative works, and patient cups of rooibos tea.
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