“Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”
John 6: 1-14
I have been on the receiving end of some of the most incredible generosity in my life. This has been through money, but also time, and people actively helping out and meeting needs.
Generosity is an amazing thing because it really does slap the face of our ‘me first’ culture by saying ‘you first.’
I think generosity with money especially indicates this culture shift, because money is something that drives so much of life, and the values of people. Really generous people however don’t need to be rich and loaded to amaze you and shock you with their generosity. The reason is, it’s not always about the amount that is shared but the fact that it doesn’t always make sense, when and how it is given.
Think about the boy with a few fish and bits of bread, he didn’t have much at all but the point was at the moment he gave it away, it was his lunch that he was losing!
He didn’t know Jesus was about to generously give his lunch to the whole crowd (through a miracle of multiplication). And what a help it was. 5,000 men fed, plus of course the women and children too, all from a kids lunch box!
The point is, we can receive incredible generosity and we can give it too, but we should also be aware that there is a certain ‘faith’ cost to seriously radical generosity.
When it’s something you need, when it costs you personally in time, effort, energy, money or maybe it even means you wont go on holiday but you’ve helped someone else through your generosity … then that is radical generosity.
Let me be honest with you, I don’t live this as much as I want to, sometimes not at all. But I want to be like it, perhaps by writing and putting my name to this I will begin to become radically generous ….
I love radical generosity, a culture of doing things a new way. Yes, there is a cost, but I think faith adventures, stories of how God just did it are forged from these moments and a heart to give, even if it means a loss for me.
With God, all this stuff seems to come around, I am sure that we can’t out give Him!
Image Credit: Yasin Arıbuğa
