Tag Archives: generosity

Living Under the Spout Where the Blessings Come Out!

Posted on by
Reply

Rachel Beckwith only lived nine years, but she managed to give more than most of us do in eighty years. She made a powerful impact on a continent she had never visited.

When she was five, she had her hair cut off to give to an organization which makes wigs to help children who lost their hair because of illness. When she was nine, at church she heard about an organization called “Charity Waters” which digs wells for villages in Africa.

One out of ten people in the world live without access to clean water.

Rachel decided to ask people to give to Charity Waters for her birthday instead of giving her a gift. She set up a giving page (https://my.charitywater.org/rachel-beckwith-1/rachels9thbirthday) but was a bit disappointed that she only raised $220 of her $300 goal.

Shortly after that she was killed in an automobile accident.

Friends wanted to honor her and began to give to her project. The story spread like wildfire and at last count she had raised $1,265,823 so that tens of thousands of Africans could have clean water. Continue reading →

That Crazy Song Stuck In My Head

Posted on by
Reply

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 →

To Give Or Not To Give, That Is the Question…

Posted on by
Reply

people-844207_640Once I drove towards Schifflange, Luxembourg to put up posters for an evangelistic activity we were sponsoring.

Suddenly I saw a man stagger from the sidewalk into the street. 

I thought he was having a medical problem so I stopped to help. 

When I got to him, though, I saw that his “medical problem” gurgled from a bottle.

I worried, though, that he would wander back into the street and get run over, so I asked him where he lived, hoping to help him home. He wasn’t very coherent but an old lady happened by and she knew him. She said she could show me.

And show me she tried to—from the sidewalk on the other side of the street she would point the direction. She didn’t want anyone to see her walking through town with a drunk man.

She left that to me.

I told the man I was taking him home, so occasionally he would raise his arm like Teddy Roosevelt leading the charge at San Juan hill and yell, “A la maison!” (to the house!) Continue reading →

Are You Eating Your Seed Grain?

Posted on by
Reply

 

Del Tarr talks about his experience in the Sahel, just under the Sahara desert. 

All the rain in this area of West Africa falls in four months—May through August. In October and November the people rejoice. Harvest has come. 

There is plenty of food. They can eat two meals a day.

But, as the year proceeds the granaries shrink. Hunger begins to bites. 

Tarr says, “April is the month that haunts my memory…Parents go at this time of year to the bush country, where they scrape bark from certain trees. They dig up roots as well, collect leaves, and grind it all together to make a thin gruel. 

“They may pawn a chair, a cooking pot, or bicycle tires in order to buy a little more grain from those wealthy enough to have some remaining, but most often the days are passed with only an evening cup of gruel.”

At this time there was always a little boy somewhere who would run into the house and tell his father, “I’ve found grain!” He’d been poking around in the hut behind the house and found a leather pouch full of grain.

He thought the family was saved.

The father would sadly shake his head and say, “Son, that is our seed. If we eat that there will be no harvest.” Continue reading →