Generosity Encouraged
 One of my favourite TV programmes is Secret Millionaire, because it’s one of the few programmes that celebrates acts of generosity and doesn’t glamorise wealth and success. This week’s episode featured a 42 year-old multi-millionaire entrepreneur – a nice guy, but a workaholic who doesn’t spend much time with his children and isn’t very good at expressing his feelings. He is sent ‘under-cover’ to Derby in search of worthy causes to support. There he meets an 11-year old girl who is caring for her mother who has the degenerative disease, Huntingdon’s. It’s hard work, but she displays amazing resilience. The relationship she has with her mum is beautiful to watch – tragic, yet full of love, tenderness and joy. He also meets a couple who are trying to raise £300,000 to pay for treatment for their young son who has a rare form of cancer. Their tight-knit community is doing all it can to help. He joins them for a rowdy evening in the local pub where men are having various parts of their body waxed to raise money in aid of the young boy.
His last stop is to meet a woman who set up her own charity to arrange special outings for families whose children are suffering from a serious illness or disability. The woman is severely disabled herself, but fits her charitable work around regular visits to the hospital. “Because caring for others and showing love to others is what really matters” she says (or words to that effect).  When the secret millionaire eventually reveals his true identity and hands over substantial cheques to each of the people he has met, there is a certain irony. He has the money and the power, but what they have is much more valuable. He returns home determined to live differently, because of what he has seen in these people. What struck me most about this was the transformative power of generosity – for those who receive, those who give, and those who witness it. Money and wealth is the currency that drives the world economy, but generosity is the currency in God’s Kingdom. As the Christian writer, Rob Bell, writes in his book, Velvet Elvis:
“It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly on display. We must reclaim the church as a ‘blessing machine’, not just because this is what Jesus intended from the beginning, but also because serving people is the only way their perceptions of the church are ever going to change.”
Dearest Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labour and not to ask for reward, save that of
knowing that I am doing Your will. Amen
(St. Ignatius of Loyola)
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