Living the Good Life: Generosity

Blessed are those who are generous, because they feed the poor. - Proverbs 22:9

Merchants have already quickly forgotten Thanksgiving in the rush for Christmas money. I think most of them, except for the grocers, completely forgot Thanksgiving altogether this year. In fact, I was hearing Christmas songs in the stores before I’d even lost the sugar buzz from eating my kids’ Halloween candy.

Thanksgiving just doesn’t make the stores a whole lot of money. On Thanksgiving, we give God thanks for all He has given us through the year. That sort of celebration doesn’t lend itself to retail exploitation. But on the day after Thanksgiving, the retailers breathe a sigh of relief as Americans rush out to get whatever it is that will be the huge Christmas gift this year – at all-time low prices, if you’re early enough.

For some, Thanksgiving is simply an annoyance, a detour in the endeavor to make more and more money. For others, Thanksgiving kicks off the whole season of accumulation.

In Matthew 6:19-21, Jesus told his followers “Don’t store up your treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves cannot break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

The secret to living the good life is generosity. As we read in Acts 20:35, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

At a church where I used to serve, they had a tradition of participating in the Appalachia Service Project doing home repair for some of the neediest families in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Now you have to realize that the people in my church were economically diverse from those we served – meaning that we were wealthy while they were poor. Those families were dirt poor, living in shacks, but – this always blew our kids away – they were completely content. What’s more, they were always giving. We would leave our work site feeling like we had received more than we had given, that we had been blessed.
How is it that some are able to be so completely generous, even when they have little to give? It all seems to be a matter of perspective and power.

Perspective in this: everything we have now was given to us by God, and He is the rightful owner of it all.

At this point, Pat B and I did a skit called "The Pearl Dealer" which focused on Jesus' parable about the pearl of great price to help illustrate this).

God has given us so much – we have an absolute abundance. Yet when we think of what we have, we count it our own. If someone asks for it, we immediately get defensive. “That’s MINE!” we shout, sounding like a bunch of two-year olds.

Then we wonder why none of it satisfies.

1 Timothy 6:17-21 says, “Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life.”

Here’s the thing about Thanksgiving; it’s great to give thanks – we need to. But to limit it to one day, that is wrong. To move quickly past Thanksgiving into a gift-buying, materialistic frenzy, that’s wrong. Instead, we should look at what God has given to us and share it with those who need it. That is how we live the good life… because that’s the kind of life God rewards.