For God Loves a Cheerful GiverShembull

Giving of Our Time For me, giving my time is a challenge. Sure, I will give my money away fairly freely. I’ll share my apartment and my food, but being open-handed with my time, which I don’t have a lot of, is hard. In ministry, we learn that our time is not our own--there is always someone who needs to talk, something that comes up unexpectedly, someone who changes plans on us last minute, etc. But our time is also something we are called to use as a blessing to others. To share another story of my stinginess, I had a friend who was undergoing a medical procedure and asked to stay with me the night after her operation. I met her at the hospital and walked with her first to the pharmacy and then to my apartment. I had picked up some things she had asked for dinner and thought, I’m doing a good job hosting her and making sure she has what she needs. You can imagine that things didn’t play out as smoothly as I thought they would. I had prepared for her physical needs (or at least some of them), but I hadn’t prepared for her needing me nearby in case she had an adverse reaction to the medicine or for her inability to do simple tasks to take care of herself, and these extra demands invaded my time. I couldn’t do what I had planned to do because she was in my home and needed me around to do different things for her. By the time she left the next afternoon (she was only with me for 24 hours), I was put out. My reflection afterward was this: was I really being generous if my reaction was frustration anytime she interrupted me or asked for something? No, not really. What I gave her had limits, and those limits were selfish. What are some ways that you give your time away? What do these verses share about the heart of giving? How can you apply what you’ve read in your context?