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 to the whole world.

I point out that this great body of water–which at the time I first wrote this–was flowing a couple 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 across the country to Eastern Montana.

Similarly, 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.

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

I was worshiping at Williams Boulevard Baptist Church, up the street from where I lived in Kenner, Louisiana.

That morning, the church received two offerings. The first, in the middle of the service, went for the regular ministries of their church. The second, at the end, was being sent to our International Mission Board for recovery work in two countries that had suffered devastating earthquakes.

I dropped a few dollars into the second offering and something occurred to 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.

Along the upper Mississippi River–from St. Louis northward–there are 29 locks and dams. Most were built in the 1930s, although a few have been replaced since then due to the larger and longer barges trying to get through those locks.

A lock is a device for allowing ships navigating the river to move higher (if they are going up the river) or lower (if descending the river) at places where the natural features of the river do not allow it. Without these, ships and tows could travel only so far before being forced to turn back.

The rain that falls around Lake Itaca, Minnesota, is said to form the headwaters of the Mississippi River. As it makes its way southward, that stream is joined by rushing torrents from the Ohio, the Missouri, and numerous other rivers and creeks of all sizes. Finally, perhaps a full week after its departure, that water flows past my house on the final 95-mile leg before spreading into the Gulf of Mexico.

Along the way, part of that water is diverted into dams and through locks before flowing onward.

And now to the offering.

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