Foolish Generosity

Proper use of money has been on the mind a lot.
Mom loves me so she made and mailed cookies.  Don't get me wrong.  The cookies were great, but... shipping cost $8.75.  That could have paid for two more batches of cookies.  To be more efficient with her giving she could just Paypal me all that money and email me the recipe, then I could make them myself and have 3 times as much cookie love right?!
I think we all know that would kind of defeat the point.  She didn't send those cookies in order for me to experience the maximum amount of delicious cookie possible (oatmeal cookies with white chocolate chips!).  She sent them because she loves me and wanted me to feel her love despite being so far away.  And yes, it worked.  I felt quite loved when I came home and found them on my doorstep :) :) :D
Shipping cookies almost 600 miles is a mildly extravagant way to communicate love.  It's the extravagance that carries the important part.  When God works in us and through us, he wants to communicate his love to us, and he also wants to communicate his love through us to others.  In both cases he likes to do so extravagantly.  It's not always the most financially efficient or "responsible" way, but God has no shortage of resources so that's not something he has to concern himself with.
When we feed the poor, we could do so by buying bread and peanut butter in bulk, whipping up a bunch of sandwiches and then handing them out.  Alternatively we could take a homeless man out to eat.  Both approaches get the job done.  One approach is financially responsible, while the other is not.  One approach (the financially irresponsible one if it wasn't clear), shows extravagant love, while the other does not.  Of course with the sandwiches you could impact more lives with the same amount of money, but at the same time, remember God has money, and when you follow his direction to take a homeless man out to eat, God will bless that and provide the means to make it happen again.
Maybe this addresses the concern of my previous post.  Spend our money extravagantly on the pleasure of serving God, and because it is not a zero sum game, God can multiply our efforts and allow large impact.
hmm.. sorry, mind is spinning wildly so forgive the chaos.  Maybe it's like this:

$10 feeds 2 people normally, or 1 person + extravagant love.  I have $10 so the choice is between impacting 1 person or 2.
Wrong.
Because maybe, when I choose the 1, God redirects $50 my way so that I can actually impact 6 people extravagantly.

Sooo... I think the trick is being aware that this can happen.  God likes operating like this. Most importantly though, just obey.  Don't question God when he defies common sense and says to just impact the 1 because you never know what he has up his sleeve.

Regret

Matthew 6:19-21
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Heaven is this earth in the future, when God returns and redeems this earth bringing it back to the way things were at the garden of Eden before the fall of humanity (not some place up in the clouds where we play harps, or even just a big worship service).  The idea of "being too heavenly focused to be any earthly good" is an idea that doesn't understand heaven and hasn't looked at the lives of history's most heavenly focused people.  If life in heaven is basically life in a redeemed earth, then many of the things we enjoy here and now we can enjoy there.  We don't need to waste our time getting as much pleasure today as we can.  There will be time for that in eternity.  Instead, seeing heaven ahead of us, we spend our time here doing the things we can't do in heaven; we rescue the world from sin, hopelessness, and brokenness.  Spending our time amassing wealth does us no good.  We leave it all behind.  Redeemed lives though come into the new heaven and new earth with us.  The stories of people who had clean water to drink because of our obedience to God will come to heaven with us.

In light of that, as our lives come towards their ends and we transition into eternity, will we regret the time wasted now on the eternally insignificant? (which things count as eternally significant would be another entire series of blog posts which I won't discuss right now).  This clip from the end of Schindler's List portrays the regret of a man who did so much but could have done more.  I don't know if he is right in reacting the way he does or not.  He seems to ignore the joy he could have from saving hundreds of people, to focus on the 12 he lost, but actually that sounds a lot like the good shepherd leaving his 99 sheep, to search out the one who was lost.

I don't believe God's goal is for us to live our lives in misery, but I also can't imagine him being thrilled when we let the lives of others slip by as insignificant in comparison to the pleasures we want to have fulfilled now.  I want to be able to justify spending money on me for things I like, but I'm struggling to put together any real argument that doesn't sound contrived, and just like an excuse to let me do what I want to do...  I could have sponsored a child for a month with the $19 I spent at lunch today.  There was value to my lunch with friends, but does it outweigh the alternative use of the money?  I am struggling to beat this question.

Mind Spinning Again

"My mind is spinning" was first a phrase I started using when stuck trying to speak a foreign language for longer than normal, or when I had Spanish class right after German class for a few months in college.

Now it means I have a lot to think about, and that is definitely the case right now.  I've been going to Highrock Church the past 6 weeks and it has my mind spinning faster than it has in quite some time.  First by way of the "Stories" series on Sunday mornings in combination with a short course on telling your story in light of God's larger more important story.  This was quickly followed by a retreat for recent grads on the relationship between work and faith.  Learning how to be who God wants you to be and grow his Kingdom in the context of your work is no simple matter.  Most recently was a course on finances, which is a topic near and dear to my heart but about which I have much to learn.

I think all three of those topics address related issues for me from different angles.  Coupled with the major transition of moving cities and starting full time work, the question of the day is "What does living as a Christian look like for me today, tomorrow, and what might it look like in 10 or 20 years?"

Bahh, so much to think about, but all I want to do is work, eat, and sleep.  I think this is healthy though.