Skip to main content

The Real Deal and Money

 For the past two months, I have been meeting with our pastor and five other people on Wednesday evenings. We study and discuss the passage that the pastor will preach on that week. I am honored and humbled (is that possible at the same time) to be in the group and find it deeply meaningful. We have been studying Joseph's life (what a narrative!) and are now in the gospels, particularly Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount. Even more particularly, tonight we discuss Matthew 6:1-4. 

I think Pastor wants to address giving, and he did give a forecast of that last week. He has not to my knowledge done so in a long time, if ever. We do not pass a plate any longer (post COVID but I also think before that dark time). He is not a pastor who wants to be known for talking money frequently. 

But . . . giving is a spiritual practice. It's not just a matter of supporting one's congregation. There is plenty in the Bible about giving materially (financially) to the church one attends, to ministries that do valuable work and are responsible (many are not), and to individuals. The Bible, that is, the Lord Jesus, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and the apostles have a lot to say about the motivation, the meaning, the methods of giving. One cannot be Spirit-led and grasp one's money to their heart. However one defines "cheerful," giving is not an optional thing, despite inflation, fixed income, tariffs, or a sluggish stock market (right now that last does not seem to be a problem).

However, I understand misgivings about giving--the recipients, the reasons (sorry for all the alliteration),  the results. I believe I have been faithful in giving to ministries and also believe some of that money was wasted and could have been used better elsewhere or dare I say it, by myself for my own needs at the time. Today giving requires savvy and to ask questions rather than swiping a card flippantly.

But one thing that remains consistent; it his the motivation that matters. The heart. The desire. Why do we give? If we give for any reason other than love of God and desire to conform to His will, it's off-base. I can easily do what's basically expected of me--a tithe, usually on the net!--and budget around it. That is obligatory, not for God's glory. . 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why to Read Fiction, Idea #27: Empathy, anyone?

The Idea #27 is tongue in cheek.  But these are some ideas about writing fiction, which I have done in ten novels (and counting), a dozen short stories, and two produced plays (I know, not exactly the same).  Background: In 2015 a colleague and I wrote an open educational resource public speaking textbook for a grant provided by our University System. We didn't realize at the time that it would go viral and be used all over the world within a few years. There are two reasons for that: it is good (as good as anything on the market) and it is free, although only in digital form. Check out www.exploringpublicspeaking.com for it. We also didn't know at the time that my co-author would die at 39 in 2016. I still miss him. Back to the point, I receive requests for the test banks every other day, and this morning I received one from Pennsylvania. The writer had a signature line: "Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Books I Have Read Lately

 Retirement means more time to read.  One Blood , by Denene Millner. This book and author won the Townsend Prize for Fiction 2025 and therefore beat me as one of the other nine finalists. She deserved it for her dramatic and exotic style; mine feels pale in comparison. I have to admit, I have timed out on it when I got to the third main character's story. It starts with a Black midwife in 1950s/1960s Virginia, who is imprisoned for not lying on a birth certificate about a "white" baby's racial identity. The baby is clearly part Black, meaning either the family had Black ancestors or the mother had a lover (I'm not entirely sure about that). The midwife's daughter is brutally murdered by her lover and in this chaos, the granddaughter is spirited away to New York in a wooden box. (Why I am not sure--New York makes sense, because a relation lives there, but why she couldn't just be put on a train, I'm not sure. I imagine Black people could ride trains in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Poem of the Day

 Vision Driving on a busy highway designed to relieve traffic on a busier one, My glimpse lands on a mound of color in the turning lane ahead. I see a human body. That is not what it is, but what my mind perceives. The envisioned body is wearing a bathing suit, and it is female. It is deceased of course; half of it is legs with pale skin, half is a mix of red and blue and yellow. My heart tightens; my eyes, which need to look elsewhere, are captured. I go under a traffic light and the pile transforms into a towel twisted into some elongated shape, either thrown and dropped from a vehicle. Why did I see a corpse in the way of oncoming cars? Are my eyes failing me? My corrective lenses? My imagination? My expectations? Is it too much true crime television? Who knows? And what if I had seen a human form that metamorphosed into a towel? --- This is more about a concern of aging, not to show my poetic skill. I write one or two (or fewer) poems a year. ...
Post a Comment
Read more