A Cup of Rice
How a simple jar on a dinner table is teaching one Florida family to give like they mean it.
“In 2015, I became a widower with three young children,” said Scott Broughton from his home in Maitland, Florida, an Orlando suburb. “Through divine connections, I met Scarlett. We were married a few years later.”
Video screenshot @Generous Giving
For a single woman, that might have seemed like a lot to take on. But Scarlett, a lifelong member of First Presbyterian Church in Orlando, understood the pain of losing a parent — and the impact of having others reach out in tangible ways. She was only 5 when her own father passed away.
“Suddenly, meals poured in, carpool rides were offered, and other help came in to support my mom, who was suddenly a young single widow caring for her kids. Our stories are unique,” Scarlett told Generous Giving. “We’ve been through a lot of pain in this home, but we have also experienced God’s love. Generosity can bring us together in hard times.”
Generosity has become a special theme in the Broughton household, summarized most succinctly in the family’s “Cup of Rice” jar, a small, practical tool with an outsized impact. It’s become an invitation for the Broughtons — and everyone who sits at their table — to turn their own experience of receiving generosity into a practice of giving it. Through it, they’ve watched God use their small, yet sacrificial, gifts grow over time to bless others in their own time of need.
The cup of rice is inspired by a video Scarlett watched during a Journey of Generosity retreat, known as a JOG, that brought her church leadership team together. They watched Handful of Rice, a short film about women in an impoverished region of India who committed to giving a cup of rice each day to their church. Over time, the church’s stash grew and was able to provide rice to people who couldn’t afford it, opening doors to share the gospel.
The JOG experience was not new to Scarlett, but going through it as a mother gave it new weight. “The women were giving at a level I would call sacrificial,” she said. “As I thought about my own life and my desire to be generous, I wondered: How sacrificial am I? But the bigger question was, what are we doing to equip and train our children to be generous — and what tangible actions are we going to take in our home?”
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Scott agreed. “While we work on ourselves and the Holy Spirit works on our hearts, we are also modeling things for our children.”
Scarlett found a mason jar, wrote “Cup of Rice” on it and placed it in the center of the dining room table as a visible reminder of the film. The couple invited their children into a guilt-free conversation about what it means to give to others.
“No one is saying this is an expectation and you need to put money in there,” Scarlett said. “This was a way we could give to people in our community, our neighbors, or people at school — basically, those who are going through a hard time.”
The family’s first gift from the jar went to a teenage girl from their church whose father had just died. “We had been praying for that family, and right around the time of her dad’s passing, her mom told us she had just gotten her first car,” Scarlett said. “We talked with our kids and came up with the idea of using the funds to buy her gas cards so she wouldn’t have to worry about gas for a few months. For our kids to deliver that gift and see her response was a reminder that God is with us in the pain and that he will provide — even through his people. He sees you and knows you are hurting.”
The family’s teenage daughter, Ellie Broughton, said the experience has stayed with her. “I think it is really important to give and to do it with a kind heart — not just for yourself, but for others and to be happy about it.”
The concept has been contagious.
“What has been neat for me,” Scarlett said, “is the conversations that have happened with friends from the neighborhood and family who come over for dinner and see the jar, then ask, ‘What’s that all about?’ We can share the story of the video and how it has inspired our family. We have had others say they plan to implement the same idea at home. I think we’ve also had anonymous gifts added to the jar — from grandparents or others when we aren’t looking — because when we look at it, I know my child didn’t have a $50 bill. I am so thankful for that sense of giving together.”
For the Broughtons, generosity is both practice and testimony.
“We have been the recipients of people’s extravagant, radical generosity,” Scarlett said. “And so, it is our hope that our family can do that for others.”
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