Giving Tuesday 2019 is just about over. Did you like it? That answer will vary as wildly, I imagine, as the answers to whether or not people “liked” Black Friday. Some get into such things, to be sure.
Some get fatigued.
Our culture can be… so much. Soooo much. We buy a lot, we say a lot, we post a lot. We compete for so many pieces of so many pies. Sometimes we’re the pie itself.
On Giving Tuesday last year (the Johnson family’s very first with “raising our support” as our daily reality), we skipped out. Totally.
Well, at least we skipped out on the side of Giving Tuesday you wouldn’t expect people like us to skip: the getting side. But I realized I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Couldn’t force myself to want to become part of the noise. So I decided to take a hard pass on The Ask.
Yet this year––you’ve gotten our letter in the mail, read the previous ask emails before this one––was different, wasn’t it? I don’t know exactly why, but I didn’t feel right about last year, though I wasn’t sure why. Had I been…
Prideful? (What do we need to ask for? We trust in the Lord, don’t we?)
Presumptuous? (I’m sure there’ll always continue to be just enough in our account…)
Condescending? (Wow, these people are wearing me out with this asking! Thank goodness for me not beating my own drum like that…)
Passive? (I’m not one of these “Christian marketers” and I’m sure not about to spend any time learning how to become one…)
Or was I simply regretful come this year? (Yikes, I didn’t expect our account to bottom out like that and not be able to fund _________…)
Whatever it was, this year we participated.
Prayed.
Trusted.
And…asked.
Were our goals unrealistic? Ha! We won’t have any idea until after Dec 31, I suppose.
But already the Lord has brought in more than what came in as extra funds around this time last year. (Um, zero.) Because last year we didn’t ask. We didn’t shout out (or even whisper) to anyone that the Dann and Tammy Johnson family serving refugees in Clarkston, Georgia was a really worthy Kingdom endeavor.
And––this is where I’m currently doing my deep thinking–– is it possible that what I didn’t see last year is that God (who frankly can make money drop into a mailbox from across the globe without my ever asking, and we’ve seen that more than once) might just be glorified in the asking?
I pray He is.
For our part, we rookies found the learning to Ask taking a level of humility and maturity that we have to work towards, or at least pray towards, perhaps grow towards.
But for sure He knew what He was talking about when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (We learned that one eons ago.)
So of course today we kept up the Giving Tuesday habit that we never skip, the fun one: picking a few friends and giving away a few sizable chunks of change that we can’t exactly afford but at the same time choose to not care about cause that’s a minor detail the Lord can totally be trusted with.
But, I mused, why did we give to them?
Because they’d asked.
And so, now, have we. And I literally have no idea if we’ll even come within waving distance of our goal:*
-$8,000 from our monthly givers
-$8000 from other previous givers
-$8000 from first-time givers
That’s a lot of money. Yet it’s completely appropriate in light of our ministry budget, which happens to require quite a few a-lotsa-monies.
For you, whether today or some other time before year-end, I hope that you give away more––to anyone, really––than you ever have. There are so many deserving ministries you already know. Some won’t be very good at making their voice heard. Don’t forget them. Some will. Don’t judge them.
And may all your 2019 giving do what it was designed to do: connect you ever closer to your Father who Gave the Most. He loves you. And he loves the cheerful giver.
*I did hit one of my financial goals right on the nose: my goal for our share of the $7 million Facebook frenzy matching giveaway pie this morning. 0%. I know, aim high and all that jazz.