Proverbs 11:24-26

God's arithmetic, which no spreadsheet has ever balanced: scattering that increases, hoarding that impoverishes. The five loaves in the Gospel worked the same strange math — multiplied by division, augmented by subtraction. This proverb has circulated so long among God's people that it's worn smooth like an old coin — and it still passes at full value, because the metal is pure and the stamp of royalty is on it.

The law of the watering can: pour out, and it falls back on you as dew. If we are not watering, we are withering — there is no third state for a soul. And the picture corrects a common fear: the giving Christian isn't a candle that burns itself away serving others. A candle is no emblem for a believer — he is more like the sun, which by some alchemy of grace burns brighter by shining.

The grain-hoarder who sits on full barns in a hungry market, waiting for desperation to spike the price, earns the people's curse — and Scripture co-signs it. Note the bar height: the blessed man isn't even required to give the corn away; he just sells it — brings it to market honestly when it's needed. God blesses ordinary commerce done uncrookedly in a hard season. And one step higher: if cursed is the man who withholds bread, what of the believer who sits on the Bread of Life — priced "without money and without price" — and never tells a hungry soul where it's sold?