Generous

This morning I started writing an outline for a post in my head. I thought I'd call it Generous. I'd put a link to the Generous series from Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church Seattle. I'd talk about how I used to be really stingy, miserly and keep a tight rein on my budget, always tracking every penny, committed to the local church with a tithe (and proud of it), until God called me to be Generous. There have been times when I was in need of accepting others' generosity-- and I always felt blessed. Touched by the very hand of God. Loved and cherished by the Creator, who knows every hair on my head and when I'm out of toilet paper and could use a visit to The Storehouse to get a load of groceries, fat roll of TP sticking out of the top of the bag. What I never truly appreciated was how it felt to be Generous.

Oh, I'd give here and there. Once there was a special offering taken up at church, and for some reason I had my grocery money in cash, in my purse. I never had grocery money, cash, in my purse. I usually used a credit card. But that time I had cash, and I put $100 in the offering plate for the special need... leaving $15 to feed my family for the week. And I went to purchase rice and beans and felt quite proud that I'd been generous. I was always happy to make a meal for a family who had a birth or illness or hospitalization or death, although I never thought of it as generous- just my duty.

So I do my shopping on Wednesdays, and several times I've thought of a certain person while I was shopping... and I'd thought, I should call her up and see if she has a list I could shop for her, while I'm at it. She's busy and this may be a blessing to her, yet it wouldn't inconvenience me. Then today, she was brought to my mind again, with the thought "Just do it. Take her something." So I did, but this time it was... Generous. A different feeling. A HABIT. Yes, a habit of generosity.

Because last Fall, I just started making it a habit to look for ways to just give. Give what I have. Out of my abundance, and out of my sufficiency. Out of God's sufficiency. I was reading a blog just last Fall (if you are the author and are reading this, please make yourself known- I didn't bookmark and can't remember). In this blog, the author spoke of the Old Testament law of leaving the edges of your fields for the poor to glean. She said- how can I make that contextual to my city life? Well, I use cash (a la Dave Ramsey) and had been carefully counting out my purchases, each to the penny, and then tracking each cent. What if I pay with only dollars, and the change is always given away? The change is the edges of my field, for the poor to glean. I felt released from fear of giving the homeless people on the corner beer money. I felt released from fear of not managing my coins. The first 6 weeks I saved all my coins in a box, to give to Mission India. By the end of that time I had $38, and my Generous husband told me to keep the coins, he'd send the gift to Mission India online.

When I got home from the grocery shopping today, my man and two hired men and my 12 year old son were busy working on my remodel. I dove right in with them. We worked hard all day (I have the aches and pains to prove it). The kitchen was completely ripped out by the afternoon. I was waiting for my son to come out of the bathroom so that I could wash my lettuce in the bathtub so I could make a salad... but he overflowed the toilet, so I was about to give up... when my husband walked in the door with a box containing a fajita feast. We were the recipients of another's Generosity.