#GivingTuesday

My email inbox was flooded this morning with requests from every non-profit organization that has my digital address.  I was overwhelmed as by so many preschoolers crying in loud voices "ME!"  Some even promised "Change lives forever!" and even "Double your gift!"  So many opportunities popped up to benefit others, right on the tail of Black Friday and Cyber Monday when I even saw an advertisement proclaiming in big letters, "Gift yourself."

As I just finished reading Jesus Among Secular Gods by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale, it was intriguing to me that in our secular culture of survival of the fittest there is still honor in providing for those less fortunate.  And even among those who deny God, benevolence is still highly regarded.

And where does that inexplicable sense of compassion and highest regard for self-sacrifice come from?  Not from evolutionary philosophy.

The Biblical worldview is seamlessly woven with giving and generosity and the dignity of every person, evident from cover to cover in the Scriptures, evident from transformed life to transformed life.  Giving is not a designated day, but a daily response.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast;  it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way;  it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice at wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  (1 Corinthians 13. 4-7)

God calls us to be generous, but not just financially, not just to give in the form of a check to an organization, but how to live.  A very different worldview emerges, not based on performance but on grace itself.

There are those who seek to increase gratitude by looking everyday for the gifts that we have been granted.  Indeed, we are surrounded.  But what if we also sought out daily opportunities to bless others, how to love our neighbors -- those all around us -- as we have been loved.  Those little divine appointments with those on our path are not so insignificant at all. 

...remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20. 35)   That is not just an action, but a heart condition.  Our way of seeing the world is attached to our hearts.

God is love.  We are able to love because He first loved us. (1 John 4. 19)

It is the way God intended this world to operate.

...blessed is he
        who is generous to the poor.

                       Proverbs 14. 21

On a lot of different levels.