NO money? No problem. The capacity for generosity or benevolence is not limited to money alone. Right now, give someone around you your best smile. It costs you nothing. Give an encouraging word to someone around you who is discouraged. Don’t withhold a compliment from someone who deserves it. Give of your time. Volunteer to address a concern of your community. Give time to serve in a socially beneficial project. Give loyalty to your employer or your leadership. Give quality time to relationships. Get involved in the human development project. Give life, don’t take it.
Affluence is not such an issue when you can leverage on the springboard of generosity to gain influence. There is a huge reward in giving. I am yet to see a man who loses by giving. According to scriptures, the liberal soul shall be made fat. The Bible tells the story of a woman by the name Dorcas. One night, she suddenly dropped dead. Distressed but unable to accept the reality of the loss, the people in the community refused to bury her. Instead, they hurriedly sent for Apostle Peter. When Peter showed up, he met the widows in the community crying and waving before him the coats and napkins that Dorcas made for them when she was alive. The voice of her generosity and relevance to the community was so audible in the tokens of her good deeds. The situation so overwhelmed Peter he had to pray for Dorcas’ resurrection. And God answered by bringing her back to life. If like Dorcas, you were to die today, how many “coats and napkins” (evidence of the significance of your life) can be waved before God to make a case for your resurrection? When a Roman army officer was faced with an emergency that needed Jesus’ attention, it was the Jews themselves who encouraged Jesus to attend to him because he (the Roman officer) loved the Jewish nation and had built them a synagogue. Well has the Bible taught us that everyone is a friend of the one who gives gifts. Generosity does have a voice that speaks for you in the day of crisis.
Giving is the proof that you have won a permanent victory over greed, selfishness, and inordinate gratification. It is the sure sign that things don’t own you. And that is the highest level of liberty. When done for altruistic reasons, generosity is one of the clearest proofs of great self-esteem. A great life uses money but is not controlled by it. It seeks position as an enhanced platform to give more. It does not abuse resources, human or material. Rather, it uses them to give more service to others. Imagine if every citizen would think more about what they can give to the society rather than what they would get from it. The country will develop faster than we could imagine. In your prayer closet, pray for others rather than for the destruction of an imaginary enemy.
True benevolence is motivated by LOVE. Generosity proceeds from a heart that understands that no man can receive anything except he is first given by God. A generous person operates on the premise that he is a steward and a channel. What that means is that he knows he is accountable to God for the resources that pass through his hands. So, he loves God the primary giver and has a heart for the people around him who do not have the same privileges he has. Conversely, a purposeless pursuit of wealth is rooted in selfishness. A selfish man is a danger both to himself and to the entire society. A public official who generously and unabashedly helps himself to the public coffers and steals out of the collective patrimony, more money than his great grandchildren can spend in their lifetimes, is driven by the spirit of greed and selfishness. Selfishness is what makes a person deliberately break ranks and block smooth passage in traffic, just to have an advantage over others. The man who steals from another, whether by violence or in business, violates his victim’s right to ownership. Pipeline vandals and oil thieves assault our collective right to the products while pandering to their self-serving motives.
Some call it smartness, but it is a patent manifestation of the law of the jungle; survival of the fittest, the end justifies the meanness. It is the reason a man will refuse to pay his electricity bills with the excuse that power supply is not regular. It is what makes someone dig up the road or block it altogether for his personal convenience, especially while hosting a party.
Unfortunately, the reckless pursuit of power, position or wealth for the purpose of proving a point or for oppression actually debases the loftiest ideals of our human essence. The slave driver is himself never free because he must constantly devise means to keep others down for the fear of possible reprisals. This is what births dictatorship. These are things we seem to have institutionalized in Nigeria. And that is why progress seems to be so painfully slow. But a new order is arising. A new breed without greed. May you, my dear reader, be a part of that.
Compassionate people don’t abuse others. True love does not vaunt itself. It derives its utmost satisfaction by seeing lives transformed, making people happy by giving them hope and a reason for living. However, it is impossible to love others if you don’t love God and yourself. Whatever your concept of God is, when you have a sense of accountability to a Higher spiritual order, your reverential deference to that authority will affects your relationship with others. You cannot claim to love a deity whom you don’t see if you cannot love your brother whom you see. Generosity and selfless service are the primary planks of service to God. This has nothing to do with secular, New Age humanism. You prove your faith by what you do, not what you say. The Holy Bible teaches us that if you have money in your pocket, and you see your brother hungry, but instead of sharing with him, you pray fervently for him and ask him to go in peace, your faith is of no value. True love proceeds from a healthy self-esteem. A good giver is first a good receiver. If you are angry and sad when you see other people blessed financially, you will never see the need to have anything and so will cripple your own capacity for contribution. That too is borne out of selfishness! If you deliberately cripple your contribution capacity because of envy, it’s a sign that you do not love people! Someone once said, “if you believe that having money does not make you happy, give me all your money and then be happy!”
Love does not wait till it has all that it requires before reaching out. It simply begins with what it has. Right now.
You have only one life to live, make it a gift!
Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!
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