generous… because God is generous

If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.

Deuteronomy 15:7-8

Because I have a God Who supplies all my need, when I had ZERO means to save or improve my situation, I in turn should learn to be gracious and generous to those in need whenever I can. This is the principle at work in this reminder by Moses to Israel to care well for the needy among them. Why should they always lean into generosity? Because God gave them the land they would live in. God was generous to them. God takes care of His people. His people should take care of each other.

What I find very interesting here in Deuteronomy 15 is the way God carefully eliminates excuses the people of Israel (and us as well) were tempted to make to be less than caring and generous. The neighborhood we live in does not make us exempt. The command was to care for a poor brother “in any of your towns”. I can’t hide from this truth behind beautiful landscaped suburban fences. We should not resent grace in giving with thoughts of “unworthiness” of the gift toward the one in need. Every seventh year in Israel God decreed all debts unilaterally were to be forgiven. This was a powerful way to reset the culture from greed, level the playing field for the poorest, and celebrate the grace of God. But helping the poor should not be thwarted by a desire to hold debt over them to exact as much interest as possible. They could not skip out or restructure loans in year six because of any upcoming “sabbatical year” in order to leverage income generation from a loan. Helping the poor is not a “for-profit” venture. Our motivation cannot be in terms of capital gain in monetary terms. It is a much bigger thing than that from God’s point of view.

O Lord,

Help me to have Your generous heart. I admit that there are times it is much easier to look the other way… to harden my heart… to shut my hand. Because all that I have is a result of Your grace, help me to keep that grace readily available, at hand as a part of worshiping You with the income You give to me, to help those in need!

Amen