As we approach Thanksgiving, one of the things I’m thankful for is the generosity of our parish. I believe that generosity is what Jesus wants for you, not from you. It’s how God designed us to live in the kingdom of God.
Three reasons God wants generosity for us:
To help our hearts transform to be more like God’s heart.
To learn to trust God’s provison instead of living in fear and anxiety about not having enough.
To demonstrate God’s mercy to the whole world.
In the third century AD, the black plague swept across Northern Africa, Italy, and the western empire. As many as 5,000 people a day were dying in Rome. The sick were abandoned in the streets, and the dead left unburied.
Christians took care of the ill and dying. They buried the dead and risked getting sick by taking in the sick. Christians demonstrated their love for God, and they offered a beautiful witness. Scholars point to this and other similar incidents being part of the reason why the early church grew so rapidly.
Now that’s radical generosity. To risk your own health and well being. Who does that?
Followers of Jesus do. That’s so different from the hoarding model that our 21st Century culture teaches us and challenges the assumption that resources that come our way are ours alone.
Everything we have is from God, and we have the privilege of directing our resources (time, money, friendship, emotional energy) to partner with what God is already doing in the world.
What does radical generosity look like in today’s world? What does it mean to give our resources from a place of trust and not only out of abundance?
I hope you have an opportunity to be radically generous this week,
Fr. Bob
