His friends call him Buzz Lightyear
as he is so obsessed with getting home.
At the end of the day he has to catch his 6:20 PM train home. He has a family and has to get back to via
that train. He is known to stop mid-sentence saying got to go catch my train. One night, on his way home, he rushed past a
homeless man, asking for help.
He got home and he felt something
in his heart he could not ignore. So he
decided to post a blog without thinking it through. He decided that for 30 days
he would say yes to anyone who asked him for help. If Someone asked me for money, he said I’m going to do it, I am going to say yes. He posted it online and then realized it was
not the smartest idea ever. It was
December. He had just announced a
Generosity Experiment: for thirty days saying yes to everyone who asked: every
musician, beggar; and every non-profit.
I don’t know about you, but think about how often in December you get
hit up for money.
Why
would he do this? Well, as someone who
thinks the world is broken he wanted to change things. Now he was already doing it at the macro
level, but he wanted to take on a new habit of generosity. Pretty soon the no’s start to become who you
are he says. So he needed a new
“habit.” So he started it and it became
a new habit (source: http://www.ted.com/talks/sasha_dichter.html)
Several
years later, this is what he has learned:
I truly am able (not every time, but often) to give unconditionally –
not just money but time and attention and complements. Unconditional giving brings me so much more
joy; B.
giving abundantly doesn’t happen every time or at every moment. Old habits die hard, and life is a dance not
a set playbook. But having a wider
repertoire is liberating. He says he thinks
He’s become a better receiver, meaning he’d
become better at accepting gifts openly and with gratitude, and I’m more
comfortable allowing gifts to be gifts.
He said I’d like to stop giving halfway.
There are few things more limiting than a conditional gift, and few
things more liberating than even one small act of radical generosity. That means there are no strings attached
(source: http://sashadichter.wordpress.com/)
I think the Apostle Paul would Love
the Generosity Experiment. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth (II Corinthians
for those who follow along on the web) :
7 God loves it when the giver delights in the giving.
8-11 God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so
that you’re ready for anything and everything, more than just ready to do what
needs to be done. As one psalmist puts it,
God throws caution to the winds, giving to the needy in
reckless abandon. Don’t tell my Edward
Jones Advisor. Mind you he’s pretty
generous too, but he likes me to plan, not just have my heart tugged at.
This most generous God who gives seed to the farmer that
becomes bread for your meals is more than extravagant with you. God gives you
something you can then give away, which grows into full-formed lives, robust in
God, wealthy in every way, so that you can be generous in every way, producing
with us great praise to God.
12, 15 Carrying out this social relief work involves far more
than helping meet the bare needs of poor Christians. It also produces abundant
and bountiful thanksgivings to God. Thank God for this gift, his gift. No
language can praise it enough!
Paul is saying that God gives us
what we have so we can be generous. Giving
to the needy in reckless abandon – makes me wonder about all the hoops we use
to make folks prove that they need help.
Paul talks about the offering – it does more than help the needy; it
makes everyone thankful. Thankful to God for blessings.
When this church helps through our
Good Samaritan Fund people thank me and I see the goodness of God working
through us. I get to help out people in
need thanks to the generosity of this congregation. I get see how much good this does, how a
little help transforms lives. How we get to be the church for each
other.
What keeps us from being generous? Fear is one of these things. Children are generous. I’ve seen this before
where a kid was given a new coat by his parents. They had a drive at school for coats for
those in need and the kid gives away, wait for it, the new coat. Because the child said he already had one,
but the kids in need had none. But we
unlearn generosity somewhere along the way. Jesus invites us to be like
children.
But that fear comes into play. We don’t want to be made fools of. We don’t
want someone to put something over on us, to be taken advantage of. To have someone abuse the money we give.
Another fear is a fear of lack, we
have a sense that there is not enough. We live from a sense of scarcity, but in
God’s economy there is always enough. Now, there are people in this room who don’t
have enough. They really need to hold on
to what we’ve got to get by. But for
most of us, there is plenty, we just need to trust in God.
So, what does this mean for us as
followers of Jesus who want to change the world? I invite us each to be more
generous. Sasha Dichter decided to give money to everyone who asked for a
month. There is a FB page for Generosity Day with all sorts of ideas (and we’ll
link to it on the Village Facebook page and here’s the link https://www.facebook.com/generosityday?fref=ts)
:
a. paying
the toll for the person behind you;
b. tipping
your waiter 100%;
c. donate
blood,
d. write a
thank you note to someone who has touched your life;
e. stand at
a door and open it for people;
f. mow the
grass for your neighbor,
g. bake
cookies for someone;
h. saying
thank you to everyone you see today for something,
i. volunteering
at a food bank;
j. taking
someone to lunch without expecting anything in return.
So we tried a little experiment at
the Village today. We got a donation to
do this, so don’t worry, it didn’t come out of the church budget. We gave everyone who showed up a $5 bill to
give away this week. We’re asking you to
share (and you can do it on the Village Facebook Page or on this blog) what you
did with yours. How did you change
someone’s day or life? How do you feel
being generous? Let us know what it was
like and how this could be a habit for us all.
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