Problems are for Solving

Before I broke my sidebar the other day, over to the right you’d see a link to books I’m reading now. That list hasn’t changed in a while. One of the books is finished (still waiting on a review to be done) and the others are progressing ever so slowly. Lately not at all. I’ll update the list when I get time.

Life being hectic, I finally started examining some things, and with a friend’s help I realized that I had overspent my time. My money was doing fine, but I overspent my time.

So I picked up a new book.

It’s called A Minute of Margin by Richard Swenson, MD. It’s short reflections about making room around your life so that you have breathing room–much like margins on a printed page.

A recent reading, #8, was on financial margin, and I found it encouraging to read in the context of my daily life.

He writes:

In giving, you are ushered into a world where cynicism and hatred have been banished. You are considering others before yourself. You are choosing heaven as the place to put your treasure. You are doing what God asked you to do, and what He did Himself. In giving, you are pleasing Him.

A few years ago I had a conversation with a friend that convicted me about giving. I had been generous from time to time in the past but rarely did I consciously think about how I could give to others in an organized way. His thoughts about others were an encouragement to me that caused our family to think differently about giving. Since then we have steadily increased the giving we do to others and ministries over and above our tithe. And in that I have found what Swenson wrote to be true,

a kind of joy that begins with the thought of giving, with the declaration of freedom in your soul that, indeed, [we] belong to God. And the joy culminates in the act of giving, often a secret except in the spotlight of heaven.

I don’t write this to call attention to the giving I have done (indeed it is God working through my friend who ought to get credit for any good I could do) but to let you know that giving can and does truly bring joy to the giver as well as those who receive. Consider your budget and see if you have margin. Find that margin and then find joy in giving it away. Find the joy in sacrificing what you have for the sake of others and see God bless you time and time again in the sacrifice and His returning of the blessing where “it is more blessed to give than receive.” After all, the One Who said that never lies.

UPDATE: I changed my template and the sidebar now has that link again.

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