Giving to God

Since I've had an income, I've done my best to give as close to ten percent of my money to the church as I could. That's not to say I was stingy with my giving, not usually. It's that I'm too lazy to calculate exactly 10% of what I've got, and then get that to give, and it's a lot easier to round based on convenience. Before I had a job, I would give from whatever I had in my wallet at the time, because that pretty much amounted to all the money I had. Since I started getting a paycheck, I would shoot for $20 a week, give or take.

It's amazing to me that I can give even that much.

I mean, we are giving to God, for crying out loud. To put that in perspective, take out a dollar bill. Examine the wrinkles, creases, tears, and stains coating it. Now, smell it. Do you smell all the grease, sweat, filth, and grime that has touched that one dollar bill during it's lifetime? Do you even want to think about the bras women might have hidden that dollar bill in, the coke people snorted through it, or the strippers it could have paid?

The fact of the matter is, because we're all sinners, everything repulsive about that dollar bill is present in us in God's eyes. We shouldn't even be allowed near God, right?

How can we do anything for ourselves? If it weren't for God's help, we wouldn't be able to do anything. Period. End of story. Thus, everything we do have is actually from God.

Whatever we're giving God, be it time, money, our lives, or just our humility, we know that God likes it when we give sincerely. That is, we're not giving because we want something in return, nor are we grumbling about our gifts.

Familytree.com probably doesn't say whether or not I've descended from Abraham, Isaac, or Israel, but I'm pretty sure those who walk the same spiritual walk they did qualify as God's people. In that light, I consider myself and many of my friends and peers as a part of God's people. That being said, I often pray our hearts are in the right place.

How do we keep our hearts set on God? It's not that hard.

Tu Connais La Fille La-Bas?

In my highschool French classes, one of the first things we did was memorize various dialogues. These dialogues taught us various things, including various verb conjugations, grammar rules, and idiomatic expressions. The title of this particular blog entry was the opening line of a dialogue my teacher had us repeat in every level of French.

Translated, it reads "Do you know the girl over there?"

Is it possible to know anyone, I mean, really know them? Apart from ourselves, we have absolutely no idea what experiences from long ago influence the actions and behaviors of anyone. We weren't there when their older brother hid in their closet to scare them when they were young. We didn't experience the raw throbbing fingers they got fr,om snapping spoke beads onto a thrift store wheelchair, nor did we hear those same multicolored spoke beads clack together as his dad pushed him to have a muscle biopsy and see Casper for the first time. Harry Potter wasn't the series we read when our mother was going through cancer, and we never had to take breaks from playing outside every few minutes. Without sharing in experiences like these, we really can't know why anyone does anything they do.

But, you know what's amazing? God can. In fact, God knows us so well, he knew what we would do and who we would become even before we'd been through the stuff that would shape us into who we have become!

It's humbling that a god, let alone the one and only true God, that he would know us so intimately, and that he would want to know us like that. He's like Santa Clause in that he sees us when we're sleeping, and he knows when we're awake, except he's real. He even knows what we're going to say it before we even say it--I dare you to say "Jinx" to God though.

I don't think I'd be able to handle that much information about my friends though. There are already some moments I feel I know too much just from reading Facebook statuses, nevermind all the tweeting going on!

It amazes me that it's no problem for God.

But really though, I'm humbled and flattered that God cares enough about me to want to know everything that's going on with my life. I know he's omnipresent and all that good stuff, but it's awesome to think he knew eons ago that I would be constantly standing up and sitting down all day today just so I could blow my nose on the sandpaper in the men's room.

I like that God knows me better than I know myself, but of what importance is it in my life that on the twenty-eighth of April in the two-thousand and tenth year after Jesus of Nazareth was probably born in a stable or barn, that I was fighting a cold?

But, that's where any argument I might have about knowing myself better than any one else hits a dead end. I know myself as who I want to be. God knows us as who he intends for us to be, who we cannot be, and what we actually are (unworthy sinners lower than the chewing gum on the bottom of his heavenly sandal). For this reason, I am at a loss for words over how supportive, nurturing, and loving God is.

God knows I fail, I worry, and I walk in the mud more than I walk in his footsteps. I need God to lead me if I want to live for him.