The Danger of Despair or What We May Feel After We Give
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Galatians 5:22-25 (NIV)
Have you ever felt as if your giving was accomplishing nothing, except making less of you? Here’s a contemplation for you from Miroslav Volf and The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.
Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, 118-119.
We are good trees who bear good fruit, wrote the apostle Paul, because “we live by the Spirit”, whose fruit our gift giving is.
The Spirit counters our indolence as givers by molding our character to conform to Christ’s and employing our talents for others’ benefit. The Spirit also gives us hope. Often we experience a sense of futility in giving. We give, and recipients seem none the better off for it. Unscrupulous people insert themselves between our gifts and the recipient’s benefits, and gifts seem to disappear together with their intended benefits. Or recipients seem to receive gifts like a black hole sucks in light. Giving doesn’t make sense, not so much because we lose by giving but because the world doesn’t gain much. We give, but it seems to us that we aren’t mending the world.
What is the relationship between our gifts and others’ benefits? We tend to think of it in terms of cause and effect. The gift is the cause: the benefit is the effect. As causes produce effects, giving should produce benefits. Often that’s not what happens, so we despair of giving.
But in fact, our gifts and others’ benefits are not related as causes and effects. They are related as the cross and the resurrection. Christ gave his life on the cross — and it seems as though he died in vain. His disciples quickly deserted him, his cause was as dead as he was, and even his God seemed to have abandoned him. But then he was resurrected from the dead by the power of the Spirit. He was seated at the right hand of God and raised in the community of believers, his social body alive and growing on earth. Did Christ’s “gift of death” cause his own resurrection and its benefits for the world? It didn’t. The Spirit did. So it is with every true gift of our own, however small or large.
Like Christ’s healings or feeding of multitudes, often our gifts offer immediate help. We give, and the hungry are fed, the sorrowful comforted, and loved ones delighted. We are like a tree, laden with fruit that only waits to be picked. At other times, we give, and the gift seems less like a ripe fruit than like a seed planted in the ground. For a while, nothing happens. Dark earth covered with cold winter holds the seed captive. Then spring comes, and we see new life sprouting, maybe even growing beyond our wildest imagination.
Sometimes it seems as if a fate worse than lying in the dark earth befalls our gifts. It is almost as if some evil bird takes away the seed we planted before it can sprout and bear fruit. We labor in vain. We give — and it seems that no one benefits. Yet we can still hope. The Spirit who makes a tree heavy with fruit and who gives life to the seed that has died will ultimately claim every good gift that the evil one has snatched away. Just as the Spirit resurrected the crucified one and made his sacrifice bear abundant fruit, so the Spirit will raise us in the spring of everlasting life to see the harvest of our own giving. Our giving is borne by the wings of the Spirits’ hope.
7Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Galatians 6:7-10 (NIV)
Listen & Watch: We Labour Unto Glory, Porter’s Gate Worship Project
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRuPZCXShg4