In 2007, the Preacher got a bad mosquito bite. Not only did he become permanently disabled by West Nile neurological disease, he lost his seventeen-year job as pastor to a congregation that felt like family.
After Rick’s six months in hospital, our local church leadership (except for two horrified members) abandoned, even shunned us, believing that necessary for the church to thrive. (It has since closed. Another congregation uses the building.) We had three months to vacate our parsonage home, a move that carried a spin-off loss – parting with our beloved cat, Moses.
But God (I love those words)… God used our devastating emotional and physical losses to strengthen, enrich and bless us in ways we could never have imagined. To teach us deeper trust and dependency on him. We survived – and I say this with great humility and amazement – only by God’s grace. It flowed to us through the love and generosity of countless kind people in our community and around the world.
One of those was a man named Dave. We didn’t know Dave, but at our time of greatest need, when both Rick’s insurance and my job ended, he began sending a monthly cheque for three hundred dollars. He did that for several years. Along with the money came cheery notes, which often included this tongue-in-cheek comment: “I keep trying to outgive God. So far I’ve failed.”
Whenever I tell that story, someone asks, “Who does that?”
Over-the-top generosity is a trademark of genuine Jesus-followers. “Give and it shall be given to you,” he urged in the Sermon on the Mount, “…for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (That doesn’t always mean like-for-like.)
Recently, I mentioned to Dave that I’ve noticed a big difference between people who call themselves Christians and people who truly seek to follow Christ. He agreed and told me he lives by what Jesus called the greatest commandment: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul and spirit and your neighbor as yourself.’
“I encounter lots of “Christian” people who seem to be waiting around for God to give them some big calling and monumental task to do,” Dave wrote. “They waste their whole life waiting. Scripture tells us that, “Whatever your hand finds to do, just do it.”
An active volunteer in his seventies, he considers no task too small. “Whatever I possess is given to me by God and is really His in the first place,” he says. “...Frankly I’m having far too much fun living each day and encountering a lot of small and seemingly insignificant jobs to ever stop and retire…. I’m working on my celestial retirement plan now and I’ll collect on it when God is finished with me down here.”
Dave’s generous life challenges me. Makes me ask a hard question: Am I just a Christian or do I truly follow Christ?
How about you?
