Saturday, Renee and I headed to Boulder Canyon for some climbing, only to get rained off of our first route. We quickly shifted gears and hit sushi happy hour in downtown Boulder with Dave & Brenda. Not a bad backup plan, all in all. A friend of a friend offered their place in Breck for the evening, so DB, BB, Renee & I bolted out of town Saturday evening for a late-launch adventure. We headed to bed after the girls annihilated Dave & I in a fierce round of “Catch Phrase”. At 3:00am & again at 6:00am we awoke to the sound of someone trying to enter the condo. Some bleary-eyed words were exchanged only to realize that the malicious intruders were actually just two guys trying (*somewhat unsuccessfully) to find their own condo after a long stumble home from the bars. Sunday ended up being a long commute down the mountain in weekend warrior traffic.
I couldn’t fall back asleep Sunday morning after a second round of attempted communication with our inebriated neighbors. I trudged out to the living room hoping to divert my attention from the frustrating fact that I was somewhere other than curled up in bed next to my wife at 6am on a Sunday. I picked up a book titled “The Treasure Principle”, by Randy Alcorn. The tagline below the title reads “Unlocking the secret of joyful giving”. To this point, I had successfully avoided reading the book for fear of being confronted with the fact that my charitable giving falls somewhere between lackadaisical and pathetic. For some reason it feels like you’re giving all along, until it’s time to prepare your taxes and you compare the total of those little charitable contribution receipts to your gross income.
“There have to be more receipts around here... somewhere? Née, can you grab me the one for the… y’know… that donation we made.”
“You mean the grocery bag half-filled with old gym socks, cracked dishware & pog chips that you dropped off at Goodwill?”
Wow, this is embarrassing.
Though you may need to translate Alcorn’s book from Christianese to modern English (try Google Translate), the substance of the book is both valid and valuable. He writes:
“Five minutes after we die, we’ll know exactly how we should have lived. But God has given us His Word so we don’t have to wait to die to find out. And He’s given us His Spirit to empower us to live that way now. Ask yourself, Five minutes after I die, what will I wish I would have given away while I still had the chance? When you come up with an answer, why not give it away now? Why not spend the rest of our lives closing the gap between what we’ll wish we would have given and what we really are giving?
I’ve found that my giving never exceeds my comfort. But it is only in "the uncomfortable" that growth happens. Whether that is financial, cultural, relational, etc. It is impossible to build muscle by lifting weights only until you reach the fringe of your comfort level.
“Ooh. I think I’m… yep, that was definitely a drop of sweat. And Grey’s Anatomy starts in 7 minutes.”
“Congratulations, TC. You burned six calories… which will probably offset that ice cube you ate earlier.”
Strength is built by repetitive action well beyond our comfort zone.
Will you join me in:
1) doing something undeniably uncomfortable in the next week (whether that be a phone call, a gift, an introduction)
2) giving away something that is truly valuable in the next month?
I wonder if we won’t be truly surprised by the outcome! Feel free to post some comments here. We’ll all probably need the encouragement to make this happen!
My final thought in this rambling post is how will the world know? If we, as Christians, refuse selflessness & generosity in defense of our own comfort, how will the world know what this whole “Jesus” thing is about? If we talk about Jesus, will the world listen? Only if we’ve earned their ear.
Let's give. Let's get uncomfortable in action. Let's throw some ridiculous love at this world; love for which there could only be One explanation.
1 comment:
Thanks TC. I believe conversations and 'blogs' like these are imperative , especially amongst our friends who are just coming into a space of actually not being uncomfortable for once in our mostly academic lives...as we are blessed with professions and finances, may this conversation be everpresent and may we not keep waiting until tomorrow..
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