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“See that you also excel in this grace of giving.”  – 2 Corinthians 8:7 

Remember O. Henry’s famous classic short story, The Gift of the Magi?  Della and Jim were two lovebirds each determined to buy the other an extravagant gift for Christmas, but because of their meager income neither could afford it.  So, to raise the money Della cropped off a huge chunk of her gorgeous brown hair, her most prized possession, and sold it for a tidy sum.  Likewise, Jim hocked his precious gold watch, his most prized possession, an heirloom from his father and grandfather.  But in a twist of irony, Della had used the money from her cropped hair to purchase a platinum fob chain for the watch Jim now no longer owned, and Jim had spent his pawnshop money on a set of decorative combs for Della’s beautiful brown hair which no longer hung down her back.

For several years I accompanied my friend Tommy on short term mission trips to Central America where we would do construction work to help improve some particular impoverished area.  Each year at the end of the last day I noticed Tommy would take off his shoes, then meticulously clean them with a towel before quietly gifting them to one of the men he had befriended who happened to wear his size.  The irony is that Tommy had the means, if he had chosen to do so, to purchase a whole truckload of brand new shoes and have them shipped into that village providing shoes for everyone.  Yet, he chose to give a man his own shoes, a gift that might touch his heart as well as protect his feet.

When I think about Della’s and Jim’s extravagant gifts to each other, or Tommy departing that Honduran worksite barefoot so another man could have some shoes, I am reminded of the irony of God sending Jesus to earth in the form of a tiny infant born in a smelly sheep pen to a small town unwed teenage girl, when He could have sent him instead mounted on a white stallion as General Jesus leading legions of heavily armed angels who could have quickly straightened out that whole Roman empire mess.

So, how does one excel in the grace of giving?  We can find the answer in O. Henry’s story, or Tommy’s humility in the way he gave away his shoes, but certainly in what Jesus taught and demonstrated during his time on earth; for money, power, and might only go so far, but it is love and sacrifice that changes hearts, and changed hearts change the world.  Wishing you a Merry Christmas, and may God bless you in the New Year.

“. . . unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”  – John 12:24 

Ah, the annual autumn battle with the oak leaves!  We do love the eight large gorgeous oak trees that surround our home, especially the beautiful fall colors they produce – that is, until they begin raining down into big piles all over the yard.  And that’s where we are now as leaf raking is soon to become a daily chore in desperate attempt to keep our yard looking nice, a seemingly endless battle as the overnight breezes blow more leaves out of the trees.  Yet, not far away the wooded trails where we often walk and bike the leaves remain unviolated by rakes and leaf blowers creating a thick carpet over the ground where during the course of winter they are left to slowly decay, enriching the soil and providing nourishment for the new vegetation in the forthcoming spring.  It is nature’s way of demonstrating how death becomes life-giving.  Mind you, it is only the foliage that dies, not the entire tree.

We humans are like that.  When a part of our self-centered nature dies it becomes life-giving. When we surrender our addictions and other things we think we can’t live without, we position ourselves to nourish, restore and replenish others, to offer them new life.  There is no better example of this than what occurs in Alcoholics Anonymous which is comprised of people who have surrendered their addictions to God (some say a higher power) through the support of fellow human beings who have walked the same path.  It is a beautiful thing how one who has surrendered – that is, died to part of oneself – is able to in turn “sponsor” another through his or her surrender, a dying that becomes life-giving.  Lives are recovered, relationships restored, and new ones formed.  AA works because one person’s death to a life of addiction becomes life-giving to another.

Each of us is like a grain of wheat, and until we die to ourselves, we remain just a grain of wheat; but if we die, we produce much fruit; our death becomes life-giving, filling our lives and those of others with abundance, meaning, and purpose.

Autumn is such a beautiful time, my favorite season of the year.  It is a time when part of nature dies, yet from that death new life is nourished – just like what we do when part of us dies.

“A man’s wisdom gives him patience.”  – Proverbs 19:11 

What is the greatest distance you have ever walked?  What is the longest book you ever read?  What is the biggest meal you ever ate?  And finally, what do you think these three questions have in common?  In case you haven’t already figured it out, the answer is this: Whatever distance you walked you did so one step at a time, you read the book one page at a time, and you ate the meal one bite at a time.  In other words, these are all projects that are completed in small stages.

When I came across this riddle recently it struck me how it was a lesson I had to learn the hard way, for as a younger person I had little patience with small steps.  I wanted to get from A to B as quickly as possible.  Why walk when I could get there faster in a car?  Why waste time reading long books when I could read the Cliff Notes version and move on?  And food was to devour, not linger over.  Then there was college which was a place to graduate from instead of an opportunity for learning.  And forget graduate school which would only cause delay in the meteoric rise in my career that was sure to come.

Until one day I looked around and realized I had been stuck in the same position while many of my peers had leapfrogged ahead.  They were the ones, of course, who studied harder and took time for graduate school.  Only when I started reading thick books, getting up early and going for long walks and runs and bike rides, and taking the time to enjoy the company of family and friends over a nice meal did I begin to catch up.

I was in such a hurry back then, yet as I learned the hard way, it was the one thing that was holding me back.  Only when I discovered that by eating smaller bites, reading longer books, and going greater distances one step at a time that life and work and relationships began to take shape in the ways I had always dreamed.

Funny how in my twenties and thirties I had all those years ahead of me, yet I was so impatient.  And now that my years have grown more limited it seems so natural and peaceful to live one day at a time, taking one step at a time.  I suppose the old Proverb is correct, “a man’s wisdom gives him patience.”

“I will make you a community of peoples.”  – Genesis 48:4 

When I went off to college one of the first people I met was a guy named Ralph who lived in the same dorm down the hall from me.  Ralph was a graduate from one of the big city high schools in a wealthy section of Houston, the exact polar opposite of the small Texas Panhandle town where I grew up.  At first I did not think much of it.  We both, after all, had proven to have attained the grades and credentials to gain admission into the same competitive university.  But Ralph was a curious sort of guy who found my rural upbringing to be a bit of a novelty which led to a great deal of conversation about the differences.  Since small town society was all I had ever known I was at first taken aback, not that Ralph was insulting, rather I had naively assumed people, Americans in general and Texans in particular, had much more in common than differences.

Ralph and I never saw each other again after that first semester, but I will forever remain grateful for those late-night dorm room conversations that helped prepare me and my future family to become happy and prosperous urban dwellers – like Ralph’s family had been – never to return to my rural roots.  Except, as the old saying goes, “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can never take the country out of the boy.”

Fast forward many years later, I was asked to speak to a roomful of Wall Street investment bankers in New York about a rather sensitive issue pertaining to the internal culture of our investment banking firm that was having a negative impact on relationships, and consequently the growth of our business.  I felt like I had gotten the short straw on that assignment; that is until I remembered my conversations with Ralph and his curiosity about rural life, which led me to share some stories about my experience growing up in a small town and what it was like to live together in community where we all knew each other, looked out for one another, and helped each other out.

In speaking to Jacob regarding the Promise Land God made it clear, “I will make you a community of peoples.”  Community!  That was the key message that day, and perhaps what Ralph’s curious mind was fishing for.  In small towns it is sort of an organic thing, but communities exist everywhere, as I have learned, including big cities.  It’s any place where people know each other, look out for one another, and help each other out.

“They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green . . .”  – Psalm 92:14 

If you were anything like me starting off in life you probably had this wild dream in the back of your mind that “if I can ever achieve enough financial success in life to have all the things I want, plus enough set aside so that I don’t have to break my back to make ends meet, I will have achieved the American dream.”  (Thankfully, some of you pursued a higher calling than me.)  Again, if you were like me the possibility of that ever happening was so remote that it was – well, just pure fantasy.  Looking back on that now, though, I realize how foolish I was; for I did eventually wake up one day and realize that achieving financial success is not necessarily all it’s cracked up to be.

In one of his many brilliant and convicting parables, Jesus tells of a rich man whose land produces an abundant harvest, enough so that the man decides he should build bigger barns in which to store his surplus grain, after which he plans to kick back and enjoy life for many years; “eat, drink and be merry,” he says (Luke 12:13-21).  At one time I would have agreed with the man.

I’m curious how the concept of retirement became so prevalent in our society, to the extent of almost being an entitlement.  Some speculate it was the establishment of Social Security, which as the average life-expectancy continues to increase, has evolved from being a stopgap for the aged as it was first intended, to becoming a long-term pension for the masses.  Others credit the decades of post-World War II prosperity that led to the growth of corporate pension plans and the ability to accumulate wealth through 401k plans and the like.  We all expect it though, don’t we, myself included.  Plus, we fear the warnings from the financial services industry (my old stomping ground) that if we fail to save enough for the “golden years” and invest it wisely our goose will surely be cooked.

Of course it’s wise that we should strive to attain adequate financial resources in order to provide for ourselves and our families in the future in case our ability to earn diminishes.  But more importantly, it frees us to use our time, treasure and energy for the benefit of others, and for the advancement of God’s Kingdom.  And if we can possibly do so, don’t we all have this wild dream in the back of our minds to live out our days like the Psalmist says? “They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green.”