Week 3 – Cheerfulness

When I think about the joy of giving, the first person I think of is my grandma. My grandma, otherwise known as Gramcracker, Grambo and, most often, Grams was a huge part of my growing-up years and I basically idolized her. She was completely her own person, scatter-brained and feisty. But most of all she was generous. She was pretty much incapable of arriving anywhere without a gift in her hand.

 

For instance, once I mentioned to her that I loved quarters. A couple days later she came over with a gallon sized ziplock bag full of quarters. See, she just adored making people happy. And not just people she was related to. If she connected with a salesperson at the grocery store, it wasn’t unheard of her to go back and give that person a lovely scarf or a box of chocolates. That was just who she was.

 

So, when I think of being a cheerful giver, I think of my Grams first. She found such joy in seeing the surprise and delight in people’s faces when she gave and I can tell you, her own delight was tenfold theirs.

 

This is God’s heart for us, too. He simply delights when we receive his good gifts with a grateful smile. And it is His desire that we know that joy of giving, too. That’s why we are instructed to be generous givers. We’re not supposed to plaster a fake smile across our face, but find genuine delight in giving to others, just like He feels when He gives to us.

 

But this is a lost art nowadays. In a culture steeped in consumerism, we’re encouraged to think only of ourselves and what we want. Christmas has become a holiday where kids are repetitively asked “what do you want for Christmas?” Wouldn’t a better question be, “what do you want to give for Christmas”? What if we flipped the script and began building the muscles of giving, rather than receiving?

 

And it is like a muscle. The more we seek eliciting joy in others, the more we learn to find joy in their joy. It’s like anything else. The more time and effort you take to do something, the more you value it. It’s developing a loving heart for other people.