Over the past few weeks I’ve
become one with the paintbrush. As some of you might know, Jenny and I
have been involved in what can only be described as the “home
improvement project that never ends.” For some time now, we’ve been
working to get the floors painted in the downstairs area of our home.
If we’d known at the beginning how hard the work would be, I’m not sure
we would have even gone through with it, but oh well. The other night,
Jenny and I actually began to sense what might possibly be a faint
radiance at the end of the tunnel. Hallelujah! I have to confess that
I’ve learned a few things along the way. Be careful with the rented
floor sander or you’ll put a hole in the wall. Don’t wear flip flops
and shorts when you treat the concrete with etching compound because
acid on bare skin doesn’t feel too good. And whether you’re using
primer, paint or polyurethane sealant for goodness sakes, make sure to
apply generously. In the long run it just doesn’t pay to sparingly
because sooner or later you’ll just have to go back and apply another
coat which the last thing you want to be doing when you’re working on a
deadline! And besides, when all is said and done the final product ends
up being much more pleasing to the eye than if you had tried to cut
corners.
Now, as far as I know, the
Apostle Paul never took on a major home remodeling project. Goodness
knows he had plenty of other things to keep him busy. It may not have
to do with the amount of paint to put down, but never the less, Paul
does have an appreciation for being generous as opposed to being
sparing. “The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap
sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap
bountifully.” In what we know as Second Corinthians, Paul addresses
among other things the matter of a collection for the Church in
Jerusalem. By all accounts, the Church at Corinth was fairly well to in
comparison to the other churches that Paul had started. Apparently
there had been trouble between Paul and the Corinthians, so much so that
the stewardship drive had been stopped dead in its tracks. But, somehow
they’d managed to work out their differences and they were able to get
things going again.
A lot has been made of the
benefits of generosity. The kind of popular messages we get about the
“true meaning of Thanksgiving” simply reinforce that notion, a time of
year once again, when we all feel just a little more benevolent than
normal, when we count our many blessings one by one and maybe toss a few
extra coins in bell ringers pot outside HEB. Surely, there are benefits
to those in need, from Tsunami victims in Indonesia, those displaced by
hurricanes in the US Gulf Coast, not to mention the hungry poor of our
own community. But there’s also what might be called the undeniable
“feel good” factor. At some point on television today or tomorrow
there’ll be a story about volunteers helping serve meals at a
Thanksgiving Feast for the homeless somewhere in town. Describing why
they are there, one of the servers interviewed will probably make some
comment about how really good it feels to share a little of what she or
he has to help out the “less fortunate”.
Despite the “heightened sense benevolence”
at Thanksgiving time, we don’t generally operate out of a sense of
abundance, but of scarcity. In an article entitled “Real Wealth:
Redefining Abundance in an Era of Limits”, writer Sarah Van Gelder notes
that “the United States is among the wealthiest countries in the world,
and yet it is filled with people, rich and poor, who are anxious about
their future and who feel that they don’t have enough.”
One day just before New Year’s last year,
as Jenny and I were driving around town I made the mistake of turning on
the radio. I happened to tune in to a one of the more popular local
morning talk shows. They were busy decrying a comment made by a UN
official the day before suggesting that the United States was stingy in
its response to the poor around the world, especially those who had
suffered terribly earlier that week as a result of the Tsunami. On the
one hand, the hosts were right in saying that the US contributes a lot
of money to help the needy around the world, somewhere between $15 and
$20 billion dollars a year. But in comparison to a $2.4 trillion budget
that amounts to somewhere around .15% which is as they say, “chump
change”. When I phoned in to point this fact out to them they were on
me like fresh meat and before I knew it, the receiver went dead and I
was righteously indignant for at least a couple of hours afterward.
Yet who am I to get righteously indignant
about how stingy other people are when maybe the place to start looking
is right here in my own heart? When it comes to the way I live my own
life, am I a truly bountiful sower or is sparing in fact a more apt
description? To perfectly honest it is the latter and not the former.
Although I can talk a good talk about being content and having enough
there’s still that part of me that says, “if I just had a little more,
everything would be okay.” “If the dollar scratch off card revealed a
$10 thousand dollar payoff, all my problems would be solved.” And then
when I catch myself thinking this way, I feel guilty because somehow a
guy like me shouldn’t be feeling that way. So, I vow to do better, to
will myself into being less sparing and more bounteous in my approach.
That works fine for a few days, a week maybe, until I walk past the
automated scratch off card machine on my out of HEB. I guess when it
comes to becoming the kind of people that God wants us to be, we’re just
one great big hopeless case.
Thanks be to God then for what God has done for us, for the
indescribable gift of life through his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. So,
the most important giving isn’t yours or mine, but God’s isn’t about
us, God who is able to provide us with every blessing in abundance, so
that having enough of everything, we may share abundantly in every good
work, scattering abroad, giving to the poor that God’s righteousness may
endure forever. Everything that we have, everything that we are created
to be is from God, God who provides the seed and the bread, God
multiplies what he has given and increases the harvest in us beyond what
we can even begin to imagine. “I came that they may have life, and have
it abundantly.” Jesus declares. Sinful, broken, hopeless cases though
we be, God chooses to bless and enrich us to live lives that reflect his
great love for all. Because of what God does for us, we are free to
give our lives away freely, not out of a sense of guilt or obligation,
because we feel we have to but because as God’s children that’s what we
GET to do, to live lives that overflow in thanksgiving.
