Blessed Are The Generous

The more we can do without, the simpler our lives, and the less stress we will feel due to threats of overload and temptations toward self-sufficiency. It’s pretty simple, really. Generosity is a good choice for everyone.

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Everyday choices give us a way,

Choosing for kindness—its dawn holds sway,

Actions have about them matters of clout,

Better to give away what we can do without.

One generous act,

A heart bent on glee,

Positive they’ll react,

Blessings for all to be.

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Just how much better would our world be if there was a generous streak in every living human being? It’s perhaps a moot point. But there are enough of those who care, reading this, to make some practical difference to the world we live in and share. Indeed, it’s already happening to some real extent.

Generosity Meets Real Needs

To read that there are one billion people desperately underfed, in a world where there is ample food resource to go around, we know that the generous action-oriented spirit—as exemplified in Third World mission and aid agencies, and many social justice advocates—is still relatively scarce.

Yet, we know how much we are blessed.

We probably have very much more than we already need. What can we give away that will make our lives simpler, more purpose driven, more relevant, and, more importantly, more loving in the eyes of the needy—and in the eyes of God?

This is nothing about feeling guilty for not doing enough. It’s everything about asking what we can do, and doing it.

It’s interesting to note that poverty experts are saying that it is possible, for the first time in the history of the world, to actually make poverty history, now and in the coming years and decades.

Generosity in General

But generosity doesn’t finish there. It’s not just about giving material possessions and money away. Generosity is the kindness of a heart, sensing in love, all the discernible need in a given situation, and doing something tangible about it.

Generosity is a smile. It’s the method of sacrifice; giving from one to another without thought of return. It’s the little thing done now, not the big thing planned for later on. Generosity cringes at thought of adulation—it wants none of it.

Realistically, generosity is the Christ-call, a spiritual burden on hearts for righteousness to come, and a song of empathy to the marginalised and oppressed.

The virtue of love is known by what is done.

Certainly one of the greatest blessings a pitiable heart can feel is the wash of gladness for all the things it has, as well as bristling sadness for the many millions worse off.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.