Leapfrog, with Trixie hanging onto his ears, was trying to balance on one rollerblade as they headed down the hill straight toward the mailman! The mailman saw them coming, shrieked with terror, threw his mailbag into the air, closed his eyes, and prayed vigorously! Letters were flying everywhere! Leapfrog leaned to the right and just barely missed the mailman! As they were going past the mailman, Trixie grabbed onto his eyelashes and jumped to safety! Leapfrog performed an amazing emergency stop by running into a telephone pole. The telephone pole shattered into a hundred pieces; Leapfrog stayed in one piece (more or less)! When it was all over, Trixie let go of the mailman’s eyelashes and discovered that she had stretched them about 11 inches, Leapfrog was busy trying to put the telephone pole back together, and Toenail was calmly sorting through all the mail that was scattered on the ground!
Suddenly, Toenail jumped up in the air higher than an oversized flea! He had a letter in his hand and screamed, “Look a letter for us from Trixie’s Grandpa. Maybe it’s another clue!” When they had opened the letter it said, “A person who is worthy to have the formula for Candy-Flavored Pop must be a person who is truly generous and giving!” Toenail said, “We still have a little over $150 left from our reward money, let’s divide it evenly between us and see who can be the most generous! Trixie can be our judge in this great super contest!” It was agreed that this was what they were going to do. Toenail divided the money evenly, he got $110, and Leapfrog got the rest!
Toenail immediately sprang into action like a true superhero! There was an old lady slowly walking down the sidewalk, Toenail ran and tackled her, he knocked her to the ground and stuffed some money into her mouth. Then he stood up and yelled, “Look at how generous I was to her, I am winning the contest!”
Toenail left the old lady on the ground and ran over to a park bench where there was a homeless person sleeping. Toenail kicked him vigorously 10 times and then stuffed money into his ear. Toenail proclaimed loudly, “I am so great! I just gave money to this person; I have changed his life forever!”
Toenail left the homeless person moaning in pain and tripped a jogger that was going by. She fell flat on her face on the sidewalk! Her nose was broken and bleeding, she had a big cut on her forehead, and she had broken 3 fingernails. Toenail threw a bunch of money on top of her and said, “You are a mess, you should be ashamed to be seen in public like that, go get fixed up so you do not look so terrible!” The jogger was in tears because of what Toenail had done to her and what he had said to her. Toenail then threw another $1 at her and snatched the shoes and socks off her feet because he did not want to be barefoot anymore!
Toenail then decided to give the rest of his money to someone who was driving by in a car. But first he had to figure out how to stop the car so that he could give the driver the money. Toenail got a water balloon and hid behind a tree. When a car came along with an open window, he threw the water balloon as hard as he could at the open window. Of course, he missed completely! The water balloon did not even get close to the car, it went up into a tree. There happened to be a squirrel in that tree who was getting ready to fly south for the winter (in an airplane of course!). The water balloon hit the squirrel, knocked him out of the tree, he fell through the air, and went right through the open window of that car. The driver of the car screamed, let go of the steering wheel, and pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. The car was completely out of control, it went down a hill, missed 3 people, almost hit 20 cars, jumped over a creek, and landed on a beehive! The bees were so mad that they swarmed out of the hive and attacked that car! Hundreds of bees stung every inch of that car, the tires had so many stinger holes in them that all air leaked out and the car came to a stop! The bees tried to attack the squirrel in the car, but he defended himself with his tail which was swatting bees faster than the speed of light! The car driver saw what the squirrel was doing and decided to do the same thing himself. However, he had one problem that he had not thought about, he did not have a tail, so three bees stung him on the nose, then the bees decided to go back and start fixing their hive.
Toenail came running up, threw the rest of his money in the car window and yelled, “You should drive more carefully!” Toenail then started dancing around and yelling, “I won the contest, I am the most generous and giving person, I do not have any money left, I won, I won, I am the greatest!”
While all this excitement was going on, Leapfrog saw a young mother with her baby, she was crying and he heard her say, “Where am I going to get money to buy food for my baby?” Leapfrog went up quietly behind her and put all his money into the baby’s diaper bag. He went away without even saying anything to her, and she never even saw him.
Suddenly, Trixie’s Grandpa came out of his store and said that he had an announcement! He said, “I watched how these two very weird people tried to be generous. Toenail, you are not truly generous, you gave just because you wanted a prize, and you very loudly told everyone what you had done! Leapfrog, you gave because you saw a need and were compassionate and wanted to help. You did not tell anyone what you did, and you did not care about winning the contest. Therefore, you win, because you are truly generous!” Trixie’s Grandpa then gave Leapfrog another letter that had the next clue in it. Trixie’s Grandpa said, “Before you open the clue, you need to choose who will go with you on the next part of the hunt for Candy-Flavored Pop, choose wisely!
Application:
In the Bible, in Matthew 6:1-4 Jesus says:
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
We can learn a lot from this story. God wants the believers in Jesus to be generous people but doing it in the right way is so important! A person can be generous with their money, they can also be generous with their time and with their kindness.
It is so easy to act like Toenail did in the story; bragging about everything that we do and trying to draw attention to ourselves. Toenail thought he was going to win a great prize because he was loud and showed-off, but he ended up losing the prize because he acted that way. Toenail also hurt people by the way he gave them money. Even though he gave away more money than Leapfrog, it that did not matter because Toenail gave the money away in the wrong way!
Leapfrog saw a need, and he quietly did what he could to meet that need. He did not draw attention to himself. He gave to the young mother in a way that kept the spotlight away from himself, in fact, she did not even know who gave her the money! Leapfrog ended up getting the prize because he was generous in the right way with the right attitude.
Trixie’s Grandpa was acting the same way that God does. He stays quietly in the background but watches us to see if we our generous with our money, time, and kindness. God judges our attitudes towards others and observes if we are compassionate and are generous without hurting the other person. At the end of this life, when we get to heaven, God will reward those who are generous in the right way.
Remember, we do not get to heaven by doing good works! The only way to get to heaven is by believing in Jesus and asking Him to forgive our sins. After we are believers, then God credits every act of generosity and kindness towards a reward that He will give us when we arrive in heaven after this life is over.