Christian Living

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"Charitable Heart"
Wednesday, June 22, 2005 †

“Lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High” (Luke 6:35).


There will be times in our lives when Christ will call upon us to give. What are you willing to give the Lord if He were to ask of you? In the Scriptures according to John (6:8) a young boy who was in the crowd of 5000 people that gathered to hear Jesus teach had with him five loaves of barley bread and two fish. We can guess that this was probably the earnings of a hard-day’s-work for the boy, and perhaps he had family at home waiting on it. But when the Good Teacher asked him for his catch of the day so that the people gathered could be fed, the boy did not hesitate. Would we be able to duplicate his generosity?

Do not worry. Whatever God asks of us, we can be assured that He will compensate us ten times as much. There is nothing wrong with possessing material things that we like, things that we worked hard for. After all, it is by God’s blessings that we are in possession of those same riches. Lord knows how hard we work, and thus, He would want us to enjoy the fruits of our labor. What is wrong, however, is when we become possessive and selfish of our heavenly rewards, so much that we make slaves of ourselves to them. God wants our generosity to reflect His merciful nature. He also wants us to give joyfully and ungrudgingly, secure in the knowledge that those who sow generously will also reap generously.

Remember that everything we have comes from God, the giver of all good things. And unlike other resources, The Giver’s supply is infinite in both amount and variety. Because of His generosity, there is no need for any of us to quarrel or hold tightly to the rewards He has entrusted in us. God will always care for those who imitate Him in this manner. The fruits of generous giving are as reliable as the fruits of a good harvest when we are giving to God. And when we share with our neighbors or those who are less fortunate than us, we are essentially sharing our gifts with God.

As the poor Samaritan woman gave with her copper coins, we too should always remember to give from our needs, not from our surplus. And if we find ourselves feeling reluctant to let go of something precious, remember this: When a farmer plants seed into the ground, he is not giving it away or counting it as lost. He is investing it, expecting that this seed will yield a rich harvest. In a similar manner, we too have an investment. When we share with the needy, our resources are not lost to us. Instead, they are investments with God that bring us real everlasting, plentiful blessings.

“There is a boy here who has five loaves of barley…. Gather the pieces left over; let us not waste a bit. So they gathered them all and filled twelve baskets with the pieces left over from the five barley loaves which the people had eaten” (John 6:9, 12-13).

α†Ω

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