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 Life that is Truly Life
By Renee Harms
It’s that happy time of year again! The time when our minds turn more directly to the blessings of life, and appreciating the people around us. A few days from now most of us will be making lists of the things we are thankful for, including a table overflowing with more delicious food than our tummies can handle. And in the month following, we’ll be finding ways and objects to express our affection for the people we love, and singing reminders of God’s gift of love to us in Jesus.
And somewhere in there, maybe we’ll provide meals and gifts for the families less fortunate, and our churches will put on food and coat drives for the homeless in the community. Maybe already there are boxes in your church lobby overflowing with canned goods, and you are preparing to provide a Thanksgiving meal for families in need.
It is wonderful to see families and churches finding special ways to be generous during the holidays, and to care for their fellow man. But is it just me, or is there something slightly uncomfortable about this picture? Is it possible that we have allowed Thanksgiving to become an “event”? Paul challenged the early Christians to “Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Eph. 5:19-20) Wow, can you imagine what would happen if we really took Paul’s words to heart and made thanksgiving an attitude instead of a yearly holiday?
An amazing thing happens when we have hearts of thankfulness. A true spirit of gratitude in a person will create an overflow of generosity. Erwin McManus, in his book Uprising, talks about it in this way: “It is gratitude that nurtures wholeness and expresses itself as generosity in the end. Gratitude is the pathway of love. It unleashes the healing power of love. It increases our capacity to experience love and to give it.”
The challenge for humans, who are self-centered by nature, is to live life with humility, thanking God for every breath we take, and showing our thankfulness through our generosity. But when a heart of gratitude produces a spirit of generosity, only then does one experience the abundant life as God intended.
“Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” (1 Tim. 6:18-19)
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