Generosity is about passing along God's grace

I turned on the radio the other night in the car thinking it would pacify me from the frustrations of the traffic.  It didn't.  It was tuned to talk radio.  The man speaking was talking about giving to charity. 

 

He spoke of how hard it is to be generous in a rich country where no one has any excuse for being poor.  He compared the United States to India, where parents disfigure their children to make them more pathetic beggars.  The man on the radio seemed to think disfiguring children in India was okay in the sense that he understood it was hard to get out of poverty in that country, and so everyone needed to figure out how to live as best they could.

 

I get the impression that he had been pretty fortunate in life and didn't see why anyone couldn't be rich in this country if they wanted to.  I started thinking about what I would like to say to him.  Actually I started talking to the radio.  I wanted to tell him about the young women with children who come to my door because their husbands have left them and it is hard to make ends meet even with three minimum-wage jobs.  I thought of people devastated by hurricanes or tornadoes.  I thought of people who have been victims of crimes.

 

But as I was saying all this out loud I suddenly realized that even I was missing the point.  It is hard to be generous if we think it is about evaluating worthiness.  Generosity is not about deserving.  It is not in the nature of the word.  Generosity is about overflowing grace.  It is about giving out of abundance and thankfulness to others even when they don't deserve. 

 

Jesus talked a lot about giving to the poor.  The term deserving poor is not there.  Giving is not even about who the recipients are – it is enough that they are God's children.  Generosity is about who we are as givers.

 

But the man on the radio was right about two things.  First, it is hard to be generous because we think we deserve what we have, and so we think about giving in terms of what we think others deserve.

 

Second, there is no excuse for anyone to be poor in this country. It is not because there are not some who work harder and longer and smarter than others.  It is not even because some people who are poor don't deserve to be poor. It is because there is plenty and we give to others simply because we can.

 

Lord, 

Give us generous hearts that see a need and simply fill it. 

Amen

 

 Copyright (c) 2004, The Rev. Dana Reardon. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Email her at mspastor@aol.com.
 

The Rev. Dana Reardon is pastor at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Warwick, RI.  A lifelong Lutheran, she came to ordained ministry after 21 years in nursing, mostly in pediatric intensive care.  She graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia in 1998 and served 4 ½ years in Upstate New York before becoming a New Englander.  She is still trying to understand the accent.  While in the Upstate New York Synod she chaired the Stewardship Team.  That began her fascination with what makes stewards -- and more, what makes for generosity. She has three amazing daughters: Pastor Reardon says much of what she knows of life she learned from them.