Continuing with the subject of giving.
It is a platitude to say you can't give what you don't have, but the platitude is correct. You can't. Nevertheless, we often make the mistake of trying to give what we don't have. There are those, for example, who think they know everything about everything and if they do not they pretend. They can give advice on any subject. Now and then, of course, they reveal the fact they are speaking from a vacuum of knowledge.
I read what people write on different subjects and am amazed at the number of experts out there who have all the answers. Abraham Lincoln however, was a person who had great knowledge on many things but never claimed to have all the answers. He was vastly disturbed during the Civil War because he was so often denounced and criticized by people who pretended to be wise on a minimum diet of facts and and information. They offered wisdom they did not posess. So, whimsically he told the story of a backwoods traveler lost in a teriffic thunderstorm. The rider floundered thru the mud until his horse give out. Then he stood alone in the middle of the road while lightning streaked, and thunder roared around him. One crash seemed to shake the earth underneath and it brought the traveler to his knees. He was not a praying man but he made a petition short and to the point: "O Lord, if it is all the same to you, give us a little more light and a little noise."
The point is, we cannot give light or wisdom we do not have, and we do more damage than good when we speak with authority from a vacuum of knowledge and information that we may not have.
There are those even in the church who feel they have all the answers and can interpret the scriptures to mean things that that are foreign and contrary to what is intended.