Can Generosity make ends meet?

When I think about generosity, a word which dictionary.com defines as “freedom from meanness or smallness of mind or character,” I have a picture of an open hand in my mind. Anyone can take out of that open hand, and anyone can give to it, but nobody, accept the owner of the hand, can close it. If it is closed, nobody can take anything from it, but no one can give to it either.
Journalist, social activist and founder of the Catholic Worker movement Dorothy Day said that the principle of generosity always works. In the words of St. John of the Cross, she writes:
“If we are rushed for time, sow time and we will reap time. Go to church and spend a quiet hour in prayer. You will have more time than ever and your work will get done. Sow time with the poor. Sit and listen to them, give them your time lavishly. You will reap time a hundredfold. Sow kindness and you will reap kindness. Sow love, you will reap love. Where there is no love, if you put love, you will take out love.” (Day)
Hearing stories of people receiving answers to prayer, or even receiving what they did not pray for, have encouraged me to pray dangerously. Some time ago, and several times since then, I prayed, “God, if there is something that I have that I should not have, take it. If I covet certain things more than you, take them. If I am filling myself up with junk, empty me.” I am not sure if this prayer was a true one because of the presence of the conditional word “if.” But the Lord listened to it nonetheless and has answered it.
Since I prayed that prayer last summer, I have moved into a basement suite with no cable, so I am not able to fill my mind and heart with all that the media gives as often as I may want to. I had moved in to join my friend, who lived in a suite where the rent was higher than where I had been staying before. In addition, my principal at work would cut my hours in half when I returned to school a month later, forcing me to rely on the grace, compassion and generosity of others to make ends meet.
Soon after going back to school, I miss-placed my wallet and, for a little while, was resolved to the fact that I would not be able to satisfy myself in certain ways until I found it. Though I found it a week later, I have now tried to make it a practice to keep my spending to a minimum and, as my roommate and I recently practiced praying for our daily routine, I hope to continue to pray for my daily spending so that generosity may be the result.
Can Generosity make ends meet? Well, I’m banking on it!

Show me the Money?

A few weeks ago, I boarded a bus bound for my home in Horseshoe Bay, but did not have my wallet or bus pass with me. I told this to the bus driver, saying that I was legally blind and a member of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. I hoped that he would believe my argument for a free ride and respond, “Remember to bring it next time.” Instead, he insisted that I pay the $2.50 fair before I arrived at my destination. Feeling a little frustrated, I began to tell my story to a woman in the front row of the bus. However, before I had a chance to ask my favor from her, a man walked forward and asked, “What do you need?”

“Two dollars and fifty cents,” I answered, feeling more than a little bit foolish.

To my surprise, he reached into his pocket and, without counting the coins, handed me a chunk of change. I counted the money, gave the man a quarter that I did not need and placed the rest of it in the change box at the front of the bus. After I found my seat, I looked for this generous man, hoping to thank him again before I reached my stop, but I was unable to find him. When I got off the bus, I discovered a single penny in my pocket, which I had forgotten to return to this good Samaritan.

Generosity is something I have tried to work on in my life. I sponsor two children in Uganda, tithe to my church, and support friends who embark on mission’s experiences abroad or at home. However, along with other believers and pre-believers I cringe when I hear pastors quote the apostle Paul who said, “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7) before they take up the offering. In these situations, before the basket passes, a little voice inside me will inevitably yell “No! I am not a cheerful giver today!” But what does Jesus say about giving? Is what I am doing, what he is asking of His people? Is my desire to keep my money to myself, when it is requested of me, a natural and O.K. response?

In many ways, Christ’s words are harsher than those of Paul. In Matthew 21:22, He says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.” People often talk about how this passage should encourage (or rather guilt) people to tithe more often. However, money is not talked about this way in this passage. If anything, Jesus is saying that we can keep our money, or use it in different ways, in exchange for something God really wants, our hearts.

A few verses prior, while showing the onlookers the coin of the day, Christ asks "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar's,” they replied. In answering this simple question, Jesus gives the Pharisees, and everyone who reads this passage, permission to keep their material wealth. But, instead they need to give to God what is God’s, and it is up to each and every one of us to discover what that is.

People think that the church wants our money so we are careful to calculate and give 10% of our income. But if God wants our heart instead, do you think he would appreciate only 10% of it? Cheques are dead pieces of paper, and coins quickly rust in vaults, but our hearts can remain vibrant, effective to God, and useful to Him if we give them freely.

It is this vibrancy that Paul encourages us to have. The church generally hates 2 Corinthians 9:7 because most of us are not ‘cheerful givers’ when generosity is expected of us. But those who practice cheerful giving, like that man I met on the bus, know that they will receive much more in return from the true Cheerful Giver.

What can we bring to the Lord? What kind of offerings should we give him?
Should we bow before God with offerings of yearling calves?
Should we offer him thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Should we sacrifice our firstborn children to pay for our sins?

No!

O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you:
to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:6-8