To Be or Not to Be – Generous

Greetings Dear Reader,

How does one know if one is generous?  I think that there are very few of us who want to be seen as selfish.  What is generosity in the eyes of others?  The truth is that I have no idea. 

I want to be generous.  I also don’t want anyone to take my Chocolate Orange®  (If you have not had a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and you love chocolate you must seek them out and share my addiction.  Please do not touch mine.). I am willing to share what I have but not my personal laptop that I use for all of my external and leisure computing.  Jesus told me that if someone asks me for something I should give it to them.  He also said that if someone asks for my cloak to give them my coat as well.

My Grandfather would call that easy preaching and hard living.  To be generous sounds simple enough until you get into the nuts and bolts of it.  I know that I have more than I need and am willing to share what I have.  I pull back almost instinctively when you get to close to some things.  For those who do not realize it that “instinct” is my fallen, selfish, self-serving nature. 

No matter how hard I fight it my nature is to be selfish and greedy.  I want all of the “things”, whatever those things are and I do not wish to share.  I want to possess and control.  To be generous is a daily battle with these proclivities. 

I am required to be generous.  God is required to provide for my needs (not my wants but my needs).  I need to have faith that there is nothing I possess that God cannot better.  I need to also remember that anything I possess is on loan from God and I do not really own it.  I am a caretaker not an owner.

In order to be generous I need to also have my focus on the needs of others not my own.  I need to focus on what would be meeting the needs of others.  It all comes from the perspective of being willing to be good to others above my own wants.  It is that difficult and that simple all at once.  If it were easy we would not have to “take up a cross” to follow.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

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