Our stewardship theme this year is Building a Culture of Generosity. Generosity is a virtue; that means it is a skill we learn and not a talent that we are born having. Generosity does not simply happen; for most of us we learn it by experiencing it. Central to our Christian faith is the understanding that God is generous with us. Grace is a gift, something given out of God’s generosity. Having experienced that gift, we respond by being generous with what we have. We give of our time and our financial resources as a way of participating in God’s transforming work in the world. To have a culture of generosity means to be a congregation that can share stories of the way that we have experienced generosity and learned to be generous with others.
How did you learn to be generous? Are there people that you can think of that were models of generosity for you? When I was about 10 years old, there was a widowed woman in her 80s that my father began to help out, teaching her how to handle her finances now that she was alone and needed to do it for herself. Soon she began sending some small gifts home with him: the most fantastic corned beef that her nephew made; a tin of lebkuchen sent by her sister in Stuttgart each December. Before long, she began to occasionally join us for dinner. I was able to hear her stories of the ordeals of being a young Jewish woman in Germany in the 1930s. She also shared stories of being able to escape to the United States, and the challenges that came with needing to resettle in a new country. These stories were truly a gift to all of us; mutual acts of generosity enriched all of us. God was certainly in the midst of that generosity.
In the coming weeks members of the St. Matthew Community will be sharing stories of generosity and how God has been at work through the congregation, bringing transformation to their lives. What stories do you have? Even more, how do those stories inspire you to continue in generosity?—Pastor Eric