Stewardship Month @ St Monnica’s

Parish Family Day and God’s Generosity

Dear Saints,

A fun-filled Sunday is awaiting us! We will be making our

commitment to God and the Church for the coming year and

we will be expressing our connection with each other as a

family as we have our Bring and Braai after the 9h00 service.

Please do not forget to bring your Dedicated Giving and

“How do I fit in” forms on Sunday.

Our Marketing and Communications committee wanted me to remind you that it will

be a FUN FILLED DAY. Full of entertainment, music, games, fellowship and a lot of

good food (mostly meat I would say).

In the sermon last week Revd Allie made a profound statement, he said that “our

giving to the Church is not an expression of our generosity, but of God’s generosity”.

This statement made me sit up and make a very quick evaluation of how I am giving.

I was too busy with myself to check the congregation’s response to this statement, but

if it has made me stand still for a moment of reflection, some of you may also have

done so. I must say that in certain if not in most areas I have found myself wanting

and am making a resolve to become more and more a good example of God’s

generosity.

Taking more time to reflect on the above statement, I have realised that the more God

gives, the more there is to show God’s generosity. The problem from my perspective

is that my actions show that I am not living God’s generosity, because of fear that I

will run out of resources.

Becoming God’s generosity really needs to have a mind-set change. God is

continuously active, transforming, creating, renewing us and the world. If we

really believe this, would it be necessary to give from a perspective of scarcity

rather than from a perspective of abundance?

Is it not worth trying to move from a scarcity to an abundance mind-set in all we

are and do? Where do you think it will take us? Well, maybe the words of Jesus

“I came that you may have life and have it abundantly” may find new

expressions in our lives and therefore the community around us.

We may be able to look at people differently, from a “what can I get out of them”

position to a “how can I add value to their lives” mind-set. This would open us to

endless possibilities of expressing God’s generosity to our neighbours and to the

world.

This type of mind-set will also deal in some way with the aggressiveness and

hostility we experience through our economic and political structures and

institutions as a people. This is a mind-set that fosters structures and systems

which express values like love, joy, peace, patience,

kindness and self-control. These are values which set us on

the path of peace rather than war. So let us all consider the

statement that our giving is an expressions of God’s

generosity.

So how generous is the God you and I are expressing?

Yours in Christ as always,

Revd Jacque