This week and next we are going to be talking a good deal about money, and there is no subject on which Americans deceive themselves more easily than this one.
We careen between two extremes. The first is to plunge headlong into the cascading waterfall of material goods that our economy produces, whooping and hollering as we go. The second is to be riddled with guilt because we are blessed in this way. But both of these responses are simply two sides of the same sin, the sin of ingratitude.
A person who gobbles down blessings, gulping greedily is a person who is ungrateful. A person who turns white in the face when you offer them a gift is a person who is ungrateful.
Christians are called to be the most generous people on earth, and in order to be this way we have to have something to work with. The Lord pointed out, in His observation of the widow with the two small coins, that the spirit or heart of generosity does not depend on the total amount. But it is also true that we should want to give to get, in order that we would be equipped to give again. Our focus, our intent, our heart, should be on giving. It is more blessed, the Scripture says, to give than to receive.
So when you heart the truth (and it is a truth) that God doesn’t mind His people having money; He minds money having His people, don’t respond by breathing a quick, perfunctory sign of relief. “Oh, good. For minute there, I thought I might get convicted.” Don’t hide from the truth behind a truism.
If you don’t give, if you are not generous, if you are tight-fisted, something is terribly wrong. If you give a lot, but you do so because you are riddled with guilt, then things are even worse.
Gladness and gratitude are more generous than anything else in the world. Cultivate that soil, and the right plants will grow in it.