God and Giving Tuesday

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8 NRSV

 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, 
if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?  
 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food,  
and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” 
 and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?  
 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

James 2:14-17 NRSV

This is Giving Tuesday, dontcha know. It is intended as a response to the weekend of consumerism which begins with Black Friday and concludes with Cyber Monday, as though it could be the activated charcoal antidote to the poison of spend, spend spend. Everyone is aware of Black Friday while Giving Tuesday would probably draw lots of blank expressions. What a concept -- generosity rather than acquisitiveness. Supposedly that's what Thanksgiving is supposed to be but sadly that concept is fading like the Cheshire Cat.

Our son, who is 36, reminisced after his grandmother's death about a conversation they'd had when he was young. She had grown up in a household we might consider poor today. Her father used a horse and wagon to deliver bread for a modest wage. Still, he would sit the family around the table at the end of the week and count out his pay, including the tithe for God's work. This was so instilled in her that she was always generous herself, although ways which didn't draw attention to herself. I grew up in a home where I was taught about the church envelope and the importance of generosity to others. We had similar conversations with our own children.

Giving takes many forms and through the years of ministry I was very impressed by the gifts of time, talent, and money which made such a difference within congregations and in the broader community. We know that you don't have to be religious to be generous yet every major religion identifies  generosity as an imperative of faith. If you don't give you just aren't paying attention to God's desire for shalom in this world. 

Perhaps we can all do a "giving inventory" today, assessing our commitment to generosity and what we might do. But don't you figure that for Christians every day is giving day?