*** I would like to preface this blog by
saying I am in no way an expert on this subject. I have a long way to go and a
lot of greed still left to throw out. This is just something the Lord has been
speaking to me about many times in the last year or so. It is something I feel
very convicted about as an individual, a married person, and even as a nation.
Feel free to read on if you don’t mind having Jesus step on your toes a little…
Michelle (whom I wrote a blog about
earlier this month) lives in a community of beautifully dirty people that
reside under a bridge just yards from a giant shopping mall. The people there
are extraordinary.
These people have an unheard-of sense
of what community should be. They help care for each others’ children, they
welcome outsiders as if they were family, but most of all they are
extravagantly generous – they share their food and possessions freely though
they have little of either. I’m talking about ridiculously generous things like
a girl who had no pants sharing her sucker with me. The more time I spend under
that bridge the more my heart desires to be more like those people.
But what am I waiting on? What must
happen for me to stop desiring a generous heart and start actually living out
the generosity Jesus teaches? What are we waiting on?! Are we waiting for a
typhoon to destroy our homes? Are we waiting to call a trash dump our home and
collect junk as a source of income? Are we waiting to lose our opportunities
for education or our rights as citizens? Are we waiting for our families to
waste away from malnutrition? Is that what it will take to open our eyes to our
greed and selfishness?
I’ve kind of always considered myself a
pretty generous person. During my college years I can confidently say I
probably gave away more clothes and shoes than most people my age. I have
literally donated car-fulls of clothing in the past 5 years. I know a lot of
generous people, too. They do things like donate money or clothing to those in
need. I’m not discrediting any of that because we all must start somewhere.
But what happens when we stop rating
our generosity based on the generosity of other selfish humans? My guess is
that the entire world will change.
I recently read Irresistible Revolution
(highly recommended) in which the author has a pretty profound view on
generosity…
“Generosity is not based on how much
you give, but how much you have left.”
Wow.
Erin, you are so generous to give away
those clothes that don’t fit or have stains while the rod in your closet is
still bending from the weight of your remaining clothes. Erin, it was so
generous of you to give your needy neighbor that money while your bank account
still holds enough to pay her bills this month.
Something isn’t right.
And it’s funny (or really sad) because
we take this whole generosity thing as a kind suggestion when really it’s an
explicit command.
“Tell those rich in this world’s wealth
to quit being so full of themselves and
so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to
go after God, who piles on all the
riches we could ever manage – to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do
that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.”
Be rich in helping others. Whoa God,
that’s not what I had in mind. I don’t know if my SUV and my designer jeans fit
into that kind of rich.
Be extravagantly generous. I don’t know
God, that seems like it might hurt my image. What if I can’t keep all the
worldly things I desire?
A final thought…
The Lord’s prayer. If nothing else seems
applicable, this will. Jesus himself prayed this prayer and he obviously has a
better grasp on this concept than I do.
“Father, may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
Give us each day the food we
need,
and forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation.”
Give us each day what we need, Lord. If we were only
taking what we needed then
there would be enough for everyone. If we
weren’t stockpiling enough stuff to make us feel safe and important then everyone would have enough; no one would
go without.
Father, I want to experience life that is truly life.
