We often think of generosity in the terms of finances and well we should.  I don’t know if it is true but someone once said that 1/10 verses in the New Testament deals with how we handle money.  Money is not the problem, rather it is the love of money.  But our checkbooks actually do act like a mirror reflecting what we truly believe.  But there is a generosity that goes even beyond money.

It is the generosity of the reservoir of all that God has given us.  It is being generous with kindness, generous with mercy, generous with forgiveness, and generous with love.  Sometimes we can be stingy with these, reserving such things only for those we like.   Yet all humanity is in need.  They make a person feel respected and valued.

When Jesus was on this earth, he gave all this and more.  He did not come with money to give but he came giving grace, forgiveness, wisdom and even his own life.  It is what we needed beyond any financial gift that could ever have been given.

Anyone can give grace, kindness, gratitude, etc… as it is not attached to the finances of this world.   But the reality is that these things cost even more, that is, if we’re generous with them.  How hard is it to be kind to someone who has treated you rudely, or to overlook an offense when you’ve clearly been wronged?  These cost our pride and our sense of justification, and that is a high price to pay in relational economics.  But our cost is actually our gain, a deposit into this thing we call life.  For there are none of us who are not in need of mercy, none of us who are not in need of being forgiven, none of us who are not in need of kindness when we’ve had a rough day and our patience has run out. 

When we give mercy, kindness, gentleness, etc… we receive it many times over.

It is a strange economics actually that we only get by giving.  Jesus simply put it this way:  “Give and it will be given to you” (Lk 6:38).