Last year I started with Three Angels Relief to sponsor a child’s education at the orphanage in Haiti, and this year I’m adding Charlie’s Lunch Ministries, which provides food worldwide after a 5-year old disabled kid made it a point to give his lunch away. I’m only giving a couple bucks a month, so don’t hold me up on a high platform for this. But do take a minute to read up on either of those organizations if you’re curious. I’m excited to do this for a couple reasons, and I’ve come to see that the Christian attitude of giving is so far superior to a warm and fuzzy confirmation of feeling good about myself. It’s bigger than that. Maybe the missionary who spoke in my church yesterday, Peter DeSoto, put it best when he was talking about the people down in El Salvador serving the community by building a water pipeline in unity with their pastor to provide clean water to residents where it’s desperately needed. “It’s not really a sacrifice. What you give up is so little compared to what you gain.” …And this is coming from a guy who went down to serve the people, got shot in the neck by a gunman, recovered in the hospital and went back despite his vocal cords not working the same after the bullet’s damage to his throat. 

So if you like this idea about giving, the biggest compliment you can pay is to imitate it on your own, or make up something similar and stick to it. Talk or write about it too, if you feel like that’s appropriate in your circumstance. Notice I blended the financially giving aspect with the physically serving aspect, because I think they go hand in hand. And if you can only do one or the other due to things you’ve committed yourself to or the high standard of living you signed up for, then maybe it’s something you can’t change until those things are first changed (IF possible; I’m not in favor of you neglecting family needs!). In Mark 12:41-44 I’m reminded that this little goal is actually pathetic because I’m still just giving out of my extra instead of giving all I have, as in that example Jesus praises the widow for what she did. And hey, if your local church is in need of the money to help the poor, certainly give help them out instead of just any organization.

Someday hopefully I learn how to prioritize both giving and serving better than I do now. I’m trying to remember who I heard speak a couple years ago that had the personal goal of increasing his percentage of financial giving each year, not just upping the dollar amount when the paycheck got fatter. That’s radical. 

This is going to be awesome. I love living this stuff out.

What I’m saying is that in the free time we have, we make time for what we really want to do. This may not be true in all parts of our world, or in all past generations, so I’m speaking to myself and other Americans that can relate to this, for the most part, comfortable lifestyle. I can’t tell you what to do with your time, but I can certainly examine my own daily life, diagram my evenings and weekends, filling in notes as to what made me choose that particular activity or even what made me say “no” to something. Sadly, my natural tendency is to take that assessment and compare it to those around me, and although there may be some value in that, there’s definitely a danger when I make assumptions that turn out to be judgments. Take for example the owner of an expensive boat, who takes his prized possession out on the water every weekend of the summer. To some that may appear on the outside as a selfish use of time and money. They might be right, but they’ve put themselves on the throne as a judge. Now let me throw in a twist, saying that what if that boat owner purchased the boat for the purpose of building stronger relationships with those around him, AND for every one of those weekends took friends with him to encourage and challenge them with whatever they were dealing with in life? He seems like a really caring person to me now… and who did I think I was to assume exactly what was going on in his situation?

Now I must say I know few people living by that principle of owning a lot of nice things for the purpose of being generous… It’s something I heard Randy Alcorn quote a Romanian pastor on Twitter the other day, and this is in the context of Christians, so I wouldn’t want to give off the impression that I expect it out of those who do not call themselves a Christian. Please keep that in mind if you’re not a Christian yourself. Alcorn cited the Biblical passage in Deuteronomy 8:10-14, where there is a strict warning to God’s people that they take care when they’ve become wealthy, so as not to forget God. You can see a similar warning over and over in the Bible. Here’s what Romanian Pastor Joseph Tson said: “90% of Christians pass the test of adversity. 90% of Christians fail the test of prosperity.” … Wow.

Back to the idea of time being linked to priorities, I think now that I’m aware of this issue, it’s important that I’m honest with myself the next time I turn down an opportunity to go out of my way for someone where there may be zero repayment. A very genuine guy at my work has a note that he wrote himself as a reminder on his mirror, saying “Bless someone today.” I want to keep that on my mind as well, so I put it in the form of a post-it note on the edge of my computer screen.

Stopping to care about someone doesn’t have to be big and fancy. It might be as simple as keeping an eye out for a stranger that has a dead car battery, while having a set of jumper cables in my car ready to help them. I’ve met some nice people with that one. It might mean actively looking for the person outside the pizza place that looks hungry, and buying them dinner for a couple easy bucks that I might’ve spent on my dessert anyway. Sometimes these things fall in my lap; other times I really need to go out and look for them. And there have been times when I’ve missed opportunities (countless times, actually), which might be followed by disappointment in myself. I often fail at things. But the key is that a good pattern is developed over time ONLY IF I take action. There’s always tomorrow to start again. No action would still mean a pattern is developed; it just becomes a pattern of ignoring the needs of my fellow man! As with other things we do in life, we become better at it the more consistently we do it. Can’t get around that. To bring in an illustration: I’m a drummer, and after the first few years of playing drums, I looked back and realized I could not have just skipped the early practicing stage. The 30 minutes straight repetitious pounding on one simple practice pad, which is nothing compared to a serious drummer, but it was a start. And to keep the skill up or improve upon it, I must still see it as a work in progress. My goal might later become either avoiding long periods of inactivity with that musical instrument, or to practice X amount of time per X amount of days, depending on what’s realistic and what the long-term desired result is. The connection I want to make with that simple analogy is that as a Christian, I can’t expect to pass Tson’s “test of prosperity” if my weekly routine ignores the small things that I tell myself there’s no time for.

It’s already obvious that time goes by quickly. I never feel like I have enough of it. I just hope that when I’ve finally run out, those around me can see it as well spent. We all run out, sometimes very suddenly. Michael Jackson just died the other day before starting his 50-concert tour. That’d be the last time I would’ve expected someone to die. Farah Fawcett, Steve McNair, and Billy Mays just died too, a little unusual for that many celebrities at once, but thousands of people are dying every day. I could be next. My 22 year-old cousin recently found out she has a serious cancer that the doctors somehow didn’t catch for a year, and I hope and pray it’s not serious enough to end her life, but it brings the real possibility of death down to a personal level. Tonight I was at a concert for the band Death Cab For Cutie (I know, ironic), and I sat next to a girl whose mother just died in a car accident. The car accidents seem too frequent. A really sweet girl named Bethany from my college was killed in a car wreck one summer, and I still remember that big, contagious smile of hers.

I don’t like closing on the sad subject of death, but sometimes it takes the harsh reality of death for us to examine what our priorities are when we’re living.