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Good morning. A report out yesterday predicts that the UK is becoming a cashless society – the use of cash halved in the last 10 years, and notes and money are now handed over in only 3 of every 10 transactions. And that rate of 3 in 10 is itself predicted to half again in the next ten years. In the world of the Bible, hard, ready money is ubiquitous. There are, on my reckoning, at least 7 words in the New Testament for different coins, variously rendered as penny, denarius, farthing, drachma, talent, pound and so on. And money appears throughout the story – Jesus up ends the money changers’ tables, he is betrayed by Judas for 30 pieces of silver, the good Samaritan leaves 2 coins with the inn keeper to provide for the man who fell amongst thieves, and the widow puts her two mites in the collection box. Mites were the smallest coins of all, but the widow who donate them is praised by Jesus, for what she gives is all she has, whereas the rich who have ostentatiously contributed more, do so from their surplus – and thus with no real sacrifice. Of course, what the widow did was by any standards exceptional – historically the norm for most of Christian history was not giving away your last farthing, but tithing, a practice central to the law of Moses. It now remains for most Christians, however, a rather vague and far from current ideal. The report I mentioned contains another interesting statistic, however, and that is that when it comes to giving to charity we do things exactly the other way round – whereas cards now generally win out over cash in a 70/30 split, more than 70% of us still use cash to give to charity. Our preference for giving cash is rather striking, and surely needs an explanation. Of course, you can’t flash your gold card to buy a poppy, even if you wanted to, and nor in general can you drop your debit card into the collection plate at church. But even allowing for all that, the preference for donating to charity out of our change, over giving on our cards, may just suggest that we are sometimes doing what the rich people did in contrast to the widow, handing over rather painlessly the money we have left over in our pockets, rather than giving from our substance. Tithing would be a bit more challenging – and though it may sound quaint, it surely is an ideal which is no less relevant now than in the past. For if being ‘cashless’ means for some the epitome of convenience, when a single card or your smart phone can take care of all your transactions, for others being cashless means literally that, and names a harsh daily reality of poverty and deprivation.