³⁸ Give, and it will be given to you; a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over—will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38 CSB)

We tend to have a measure or gauge of everything that we do and that which others do for us. We may want to say that we do not measure these things, but it is something we all do.

But God’s way is a way that measures the good back to us on a scale that is always in our favor.

When you see in our scripture “pressed down, shaken together and running over” we need to go back to the time of Christ. Very often when something was measured out it was done so with the lightest possible fill. The measure may have only been by the size of the container and not by weight like we have today. So the merchant tried to keep what he was measuring as light as possible. It was not pressed down and shaken down to get the most into the container.

But God’s view of a good measure back to us is that the container is not only as full as it possibly could be, but it is actually running over.

If you read back through the passages before this one we see that God is telling us to be a cheerful and open giver. Because we cannot out give God.