Careless Giving

Are we conflicted over doing something nice for someone who doesn't deserve it?  Have we tried to avoid the ungrateful and contemptible?  Are we shying away from all those who want more of us than we are willing to give?  The oddness of Mary pouring her perfume on the feet of Jesus was not lost on the disciples.  It was an extravagant waste and even Jesus noted the irrationality of it.  It is deeply human to concern oneself with the nickels and pennies and avoid wasteful expenditures on others.  We can talk ourselves out of the slightest hint of irrational loving if we are careful and purposeful.  What is strange though about the mind of God is that He often wastes His resources on foolish extravagance.  Take a look at the tiny paramecium under  a microscope and you become dumbfounded by its elegant structure.  Yet there are billions of those lovely creatures that go unseen and unnoticed.  The bluebells hidden away in mountain meadows that fade and drop from their stem before a single human notices them and the sparkle of light refracting into hundreds of little rainbows as droplets spray out from a cascading stream no one is watching remind us of the way God thinks.  He wastes His kindness on ungrateful nitwits who don't have the least concern for what He has done for them.  He restores the health of a drunk who goes out in his new found fitness and gets into a bar fight.  He gives us glowing red and pink and yellow sunsets that are ignored as we traipse about with our cell phones glued to our ears and our eyes fixed on the traffic.  Wasteful love and extravagant gifts are the stuff of God and we have excused away our life in Him by refusing to make such lavish expenditures on anyone but those we like.  We might buy a sandwich for a homeless vagrant who begs us for money and feel like we have really made the loving gesture but are we willing to do the extravagant thing, the irrational thing that we could not cogently justify only because it is so much like God to do such as that?  The tree across the way is full of so many loquats that not even the crows and sparrows can make a dent in the harvest and the tree is too tall for the people in the neighborhood to pick its fruit.   God is irrational.  Mary was irrational.  The disciple who preached in the far reaches of the world only to lose their lives for it were irrational.  Zacchaeus was irrational to give half of what He had to the poor.  The one who walks with God and truly loves Jesus will do irrational things because that is the nature He possesses.  Beware of being judicious and careful with what you have and the time you possess.  It may not be the Spirit of Christ ruling you there.   A crazy giver is far more beloved in heaven than the reasonable spendthrift.

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Luke 6:38 NIV