Life Without Grace Is Profoundly Unhappy

Since you excel in so many ways…I want you to excel also in this gracious act of giving.
2 Corinthians 8:7 (ɴʟᴛ)

At the beginning of
A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is wealthy but miserable. Self-centered people fail to extend grace by giving to others.

But after Scrooge’s transformation, he walks the London streets, freely distributing his wealth to the needy, and he’s giddy with delight. Grace will do that to you!

Our giving is a reflexive response to the grace of God in our lives. It doesn’t come out of our unselfishness or philanthropy—it comes out of the transforming work of Christ in us. Those who know their need seize grace as a hungry man seizes bread. Upon realizing he has discovered the bakery, he throws open the doors and invites others to join the feast!

Giving, and other good deeds, are a subset of God’s grace. We love because he first loved us; we give because he first gave to us. As we enter into his generosity, we enter into his happiness, his purpose and plan. We break free from the money and things that hold us in bondage.

The only way to survive prosperity is, by God’s grace, to view money and possessions as gifts from his gracious hand, and to use them generously to help others.

As we learn to give, we draw closer to the God whose grace is the fount of all giving. But no matter how much we grow in the grace of giving, Jesus Christ remains the matchless giver: “You know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make you rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

May God extend his grace not only to us, but
through us to those around us who need God’s grace above all else.

Some people laughed to see the alteration


in [Scrooge], but he let them laugh, and little


heeded them…His own heart laughed, and that


was quite enough for him. And it was always said


of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well.

Charles Dickens