Living Generously
Advent is a season of coming. As we count down the days until Christmas, we are anticipating Jesus coming again. We are also celebrating Jesus coming into this world as a baby 2000 years ago to gift God’s promise to us. This gift came long before we knew what yesterday held. Long before we set expectations for what today would hold. Long before we began dreaming of what tomorrow could bring.
But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. — Galatians 3:4-5
COMING IS GENEROUS
With Jesus coming as a baby, God promised He would save us from our sin. His birth set the stage for His death and His death gave us an invitation to something unbelievably great: adoption into His family and a place to belong in His eternal home forever. Long before we set foot in this world, God connected us to a heritage beyond our years and beyond our deserving.
Jesus coming is the ultimate act of generosity. God gave us the best He had to gift us a something better than good. His hope is we will choose to receive His gift and share it with others.
God generously chose to invest in growing His Kingdom by giving away His best comfort and possession. He did not keep His only Son to Himself. He came to where His people lived and shared Jesus with the hope they would become intertwined with His story and believe His promise. But His generosity did not end with those who walked hand in hand with Jesus. He also hopes those who believe today and those who might believe in the future would become intertwined with His story and believe His promise.
LIVING GENEROUSLY
Living generously is giving our best to someone today in the hope something good will come from it in the future. It is more than going to someone. Living generously is coming to others with the purpose of giving ourselves away so they might see Jesus in the middle of it. Ultimately, we hope the good we cannot see today will be a heaven filled with a bigger family because someone chose to believe in God and His promise.
We live generously when we choose to invest in God’s Kingdom rather than ourselves.
Living generously means we are coming to someone with our resources, possessions, and comforts with the purpose of giving them away. We come to others because Jesus came to us. We give our best away because we know it was never ours to begin with. We come no matter our circumstances because we believe the relationship is worth it. We give the best of who God made us to be and what He gave us to live with because we believe others are already family, or they could be family one day.
NEXT STEPS
God’s family is bigger than the family He places us in front of. As we come to celebrate Christmas with our friends and family, let us give our best away and become intertwined with their stories. Here are some ways we can live generously with our guests and family as we serve this holiday season:
1. Wait. Come into the empty building long before the holiday party starts and be the last to leave at the end of the night. Look expectantly for your coworkers and neighbors as they arrive. Coming early and staying late shows our neighbors and coworkers our door is always open and they are worth more than the comforts of eating our favorite foods with family and being first to lay our head on our pillows at night.
2. Speak. Invite a neighbor to have a seat at your table, couch, or front porch. Spend time asking them about their week and listen to their story. Go big and introduce them to someone else you know. Learning who they are and introducing them to someone else who has a shared interest shows we think their life and activities are more important than our own.
Some great questions are: How long have you been in the neighborhood? Are you from the Lexington area? What was your favorite part of last week? Have you met (name of another person in the room)?
3. Walk. Join a friend as they make their way to an event. Walking alone into a room full of people who are not yet your family can be uncomfortable. Joining a friend who is hesitant to head out into a store, party, or holiday 5K alone can ease their discomfort. Choosing to walk away from our to do lists and coming alongside another shows them they are more valuable than the tasks we do.
4. Share. When a family member asks for a cup of coffee, snack, or ride to the store, come out from behind the kitchen sink or stand up from the couch to give them what they need. Meeting our family where they are at and giving our stuff away shows we treasure them more than our possessions.
5. Look. Meet a neighbor and commit to extending your hand beyond this moment. Invite them to a meal. Treat them to evenings in your home. Write them a thank you note. Join them on grocery trip runs. Loan them your yard tools. Living generously is not a once in a lifetime moment. Becoming intertwined with another’s story takes a commitment of sharing our comforts, possessions, and resources over time.