Generosity and Jumping off the High Dive

When I was a kid growing up in small town Nebraska, there were two places you could find me on most days. Either on my bike or in the water. I loved to swim. So much so that my hair would be bleached white by the time school began at the end of each summer. My mother always had a fear of the water, so she made sure all of us kids took swimming lessons. I was a fish! Not only at the city swimming pool, but at the rivers and lakes around the country-side by my little home town.

While learning to swim, the instructor told us we must display a certain level of competency before we could use the diving boards. The particular pool I frequented had two low diving boards and a high dive. For the longest time I ignored the high board. The low boards were fun. More than that, exhilarating. After time however, more and more of my friends began jumping off the high dive. I must have climbed up the high dive ladder a dozen times only to turn around and climb down that same ladder to the safety of the ground. My friends would continue to challenge and encourage me to take the first jump. “After the first jump, you won’t be able to get enough of it, just like the low board”, they’d say. They tried in almost every way to convince me of the joy of the high dive. I didn’t know the joy, because I hadn’t experienced the joy. If only there was some other way to know in my heart that making the jump would truly be exhilarating… Then I made the jump.

The rich young ruler found in Luke, couldn’t make the jump. His trust was misplaced and he went away sad. He hung on to his securities, while letting go of Christ. The Gospels tell us that Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus could identify with the young man more than we know. Because Jesus was also a rich young ruler who left the Glory of Heaven, to come down and live a life of giving. Giving to the extent that he lost his family, friends and His Father in Heaven. He did this to offer us the greatest treasure… forgiveness and pardon.

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2 Corinthians 8:9 says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” It’s about taking the jump off that high dive. Plunge yourself into knowing what Christ did for you until the joy inside cannot be contained. Before jumping off the high board, just like the rich young ruler, I was ruled by fear and doubt. Unlike the young man, afterwards I was ruled by joy and delight.

This is what fundamental, radical Generosity is all about. It’s about plunging in to the Joy of Christ’s love for you and understanding it in a way that affects all the many currencies in your life. May they not be contained.

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