Let’s start with Mother Teresa. Because she’s the quotable type.
“It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.”
I was struck with the real life image of generosity as I watched this video. The mother whose 7 month old baby died was once upon a time not a hero. She was one of us. She was normal. But in the giving of that which she held most dear, her generosity grew to new heights of heroism.
Watch this video and try your very hardest not to cry.
We’re talking about generosity here. We’re talking about giving even when it hurts.
In his incredible book, The Rest Of God, Mark Buchanan speaks of generosity:
“’The world of the generous,’ Eugene Peterson translates Proverbs 11:24, ‘gets larger and larger; / the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller’ (MSG). This is more than a principle of financial stewardship, it’s a basic truth of life. Generous people generate things. And, consequently, their worlds are more varied, surprising, colorful, fruitful. They’re richer. More abounds with them, and yet they have a greater thirst and deeper capacity to take it all in. The world delights the generous but seldom overwhelms them.
I want to encourage you to give of yourself today, give out of your depths, give as if unto God himself. What you receive as gift you must be willing to impart as gift. Resolve never to turn it into possession. All that God has so graciously given us is not ours to keep, but rather to give away.
This is not masterful trickery, employing you to donate your hard earned cash to a cause. Although I am speaking of financial giving as well. At Within reach Global, we desperately need more people to jump on board the Monthly Prayer & Financial Support Team and became monthly Visions Partners. But there is no coercion here. This is a simple encouragement to go beyond yourself, to walk in generosity, to give of yourself.
I could show you the photos of children with cleft lips whom we have provided medical surgeries for.
I could show you the hands of orphans lifted up as they are finally been presented with the gospel message.
I could show you impoverished communities in Myanmar that we are providing aid for.
These images may be emotional triggers. They may cause you to cut a check, which in turn would cause you to feel better about your own empathetic response. But that’s not what I’m getting at here. I’m wanting to go deeper beyond simply empathy into the deeper regions we call compassion.
Compassion is love in action, not just a surface emotional response to need.
As I watched the above video, the mother’s response at hearing her her infant’s heart beat from beyond the grave, wonder gripped my heart. What if in my own generosity, life transformation might ensue, bringing with it the ripple of love for strangers in need. The giving of oneself from the depths of pain function as the primary agency for germinating selfless seed.
I pray that I would experience this more often, that I would not be stingy in my own giving, that in the giving of myself, my world would enlarge in glorious allure.
Give yourself first to God. Stop now, and give yourself—your breath, your health or sickness, your thoughts, your intents, all of who you are—to him. And your time, that too.
You may be filled with wonder at the results of selfless generosity.
