Worry and Generosity

Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear … Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?
- Luke 12:22 and 25

Worry robs us of the joy of generosity. This week we’re going to hear Jesus’ teaching on the relationship between our hearts and our resources. And today we’re going to start with worry.

Worry threatens to eat us alive. In an increasingly complex world, we often find ourselves overmatched by our circumstances. Life zips by and we know we’re not fully in control.

When we’re worried about what we’ll eat or what we’ll wear we miss opportunities to be generous. We just don’t see them. It’s not that worry makes us greedy; it just makes us distracted and numb to the needs of others. We brush aside the promptings of God’s Spirit because we feel the urgent need to attend to the object of our worry.

Worry makes it so that even when we are generous we miss out of the joy that God wants us to experience from giving. The small, petty voice tells to us that our generosity is going to come back to bite us. Worry whispers that following God’s example of generosity will lead us to ruin.

And, yet, there’s good news, as we’ll explore in depth this week: the practice of generosity can be used by God to liberate us from the weight of worry.

The joy of generosity can drive the dark clouds of worry past the horizon of our hearts. God’s generosity toward us in Jesus sets us free from the root causes of worry and sets us free to be generous toward God our Savior and toward all those he’s placed in our lives.

How have you seen worry and generosity connected in your own life? When have you practiced generosity in the face of worry?

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