In my previous blog I made reference to some ECC Sunday messages about becoming like God in our character. We know that God is generous and we experience his generosity in life. God showed his immense generosity by giving Jesus, His son.
Whether we realize it or not, we become more like God when we grow in generosity.
Think of a time when you were the recipient of someone’s generosity. As great as that feels, many would agree that the giving side of generosity feels even better. We certainly have examples of this coming out of the current tragedy in Fort McMurray.
On Sunday, May 1, 2016, I led our church family in a participatory object lesson. I asked them ahead of time to bring cash – not for an offering but for the experience of surprising someone with generosity. Halfway through that Sunday message about generosity I told the congregation that I had ordered a pizza to be delivered five minutes before the conclusion of our gathering that day. I explained that we were simply going to express generosity by collecting a tip for the pizza delivery person. We did not know who was going to deliver the pizza, but we simply wanted them to know God’s generosity through our hands and our humble giving.
The young man with the pizza arrived on time. I invited him up on stage and in front of about 250 people I paid for the large ham and pineapple. I asked him if I could select “no tip” on the credit card machine. He said, ‘That’s an option.’ One of our ushers then came to the stage with the cash tip from the church family to the tune of $2,031.30 that I happily presented to him.
It was awesome to see the surprise and gratefulness on the face of this young man. I told him we were doing this simply to be generous. It was a fun and inspiring experience for all of us.