Have you ever got a song stuck in your head and not even dental floss would get it out?  There’s a contemporary Christian song, something about “inside out,” that drives me bonkers. If I hear it coming on my music, I’ll jump it or zap it or whatever.

The song is okay, but for some reason it lodged in my head and I’d wake up in the night with it playing in my brain. Often during the day I’d become aware of this song in the background of my consciousness. This continued for weeks!

Scream! I finally asked the Lord to take it away because it was making me miserable. Well, it finally went away, though now that I’m aware of it, it may come back again.

Recently, though, an interesting idea has been trotting around that great empty space in my skull. This hasn’t frustrated me like the song did; it has intrigued me.
God has been talking to me about generosity.

Now, I know that’s what I wrote about last week, but it keeps getting better.

Here’s some things I’ve noticed about generosity:

1.    A generous person tends to create a culture of generosity around himself.  This word has Proto-Indo-European roots (whatever that means). The “gen” part meant “give birth, beget.” When I read that I got excited. The person who is generous creates something, gives birth to something, around himself—a culture of generosity.
He influences his family towards liberality. She impacts her colleagues at work to speak generously, kindly, and act in the same way.

2.    Generosity and sacrifice are blood brothers. It’s rare that you see generosity where you don’t see sacrifice of some kind. It might be a sacrifice of money, a sacrifice of time, or a sacrifice of self, or a sacrifice of praise. But sacrifice is vitally connected to generosity. If you don’t believe it look at the generous cross of Jesus. Continue reading →