Once you hear Calvin Miller, you never forget him. As creative a mind and as uncontainable an energy force as you will ever run up against. A preacher, pastor, professor, best-selling author, and accomplished author. And, I’m happy to say, a friend.

I heard him tell this story 15 years ago and have repeated my version of it ever since. Last night I found the notes taken from that message and felt that readers would enjoy it.

A traveler was making his way by foot through a strange and foreboding countryside. When a violent storm arose, he was forced to seek shelter. Coming upon a monastery, he was pleased to see a light shining through a window. He knocked. A monk came to the door.

“Come in, come in, stranger,” said the monk.

The brothers fed him and let him warm by their hearth.

“Would thou care to spend the night under our roof rather than return to the storm?” said the abbott, the head monk.

“I would indeed and I’m grateful,” said the traveler. “But in order to do so, I will need a few items. Could you please provide for me a rubber suit, a pound of butter, and a bass saxophone? Also, if you have it, two duck eggs and three turnips fresh from the garden.”

That night, all kinds of noises came from the visitor’s room. No one slept in the monastery that night.

The bad weather continued. The next night, the abbott invited the stranger to remain another night. “I thank you,” he said, “And, if you would be so kind, I will once again require the use of the rubber suit and bass saxophone, and another pound of butter, two more duck eggs and three turnips.”

That night was a repetition of the first, the strange noises filling the air, driving sleep from everyone. In all, as the storm lingered, the stranger stayed three nights. By now, the monks were beside themselves with fatigue.

On the morning of the fourth day, the sun came out.

As the visitor was leaving, the abbott walked out with him. “May I ask you what that was all about, this business of the rubber suit and the bass saxophone, the butter and eggs and turnips? All that noise coming from your room? We are beside ourselves with curiosity.”

The stranger said, “It’s an old family secret. I can tell you if you agree never to tell another living soul.”

The abbott agreed never to breathe a word of it to anyone. So he told him.

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Often, I like to use the Mississippi River as an analogy for the great torrent of offerings that flow from individuals into the church offering plates and eventually into the world.

I point out that this great body of water, which flows a couple of hundred yards below my house, is actually composed of individual drops that fell from the sky in a vast basin extending from Western New York State all the way to Eastern Montana.

In the same way, the hundreds of millions of dollars the churches of our denomination send to the fields of the world each year get their start from a child’s piggy bank, a widow’s pension and a young couple’s tithe.

Yesterday, I had an epiphany, one of those moments when you realize there’s far more to this than seemed obvious at first.

I was visiting a church not far from where I live. Although retired from being director of missions for the Baptist churches of metro New Orleans, they’re still on my heart and anything I can do to encourage one, I want to do it. Mark Tolbert, seminary professor and recent interim pastor of our church, is completing one year as the interim shepherd of that congregation and I do treasure this man. I wanted to hear him preach.

So, yesterday, I worshiped at Williams Boulevard Baptist Church in Kenner, Louisiana.

They received two offerings. The first, in the middle of the service, went for the budget, that is, the full ministries of their church. The second, at the end, was being sent to our International Mission Board for recovery work in Haiti and Chile, following their devastating earthquakes.

I dropped a few dollars into the second offering and something hit me.

Just as there are numerous locks and dams along the great Mississippi River, obstacles we might say, which the waters have to negotiate before they arrive at the sea, the offerings we place in the plate have a number of hurdles to overcome before they reach their destination.

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