| Lighting the Spark of Outrageous Generosity |
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| Written by Ricky |
| Tuesday, 06 January 2009 07:08 |
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As people driven by faith and a belief in God there is a call for us to be willing and ever ready to meet the greater needs of others. The Montreat College conference 2008 was ushered in with a new theme this year, outrageous generosity. What does it mean to live life and never falter from an outrageously generous mindset? The question beckons us to look deeply at our lives and the lives of others surrounding us. We must begin to understand that we live in trying times and hard times. These times are characterized by cries of our fellow brothers and sisters across the world. They are cries that remind us of our unfinished conquest to justice. These cries of hunger, destitution and malice toward each other must be met with an equal and bolder cry for a revolution; a revolution of our minds and our hearts. One of the highlights at the Conference was a keynote address delivered by Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who called on students “to get in the way.” Lewis who was a civil rights activist and freedom rider called on students not to forget the power that resides within them. Lewis spoke passionately about the power to transform social ills that keep us at bay making us complacent and forget about our call to fight for social justice. He urged students to act now for there was no better time, no right time to inculcate needed change in society and across the world. Outrageous generosity requires us to live in conviction with moral principle and action. Outrageous generosity requires us to speak to the perils that drown and consume our fellow brothers and sisters with a fervency of unyielding determination and belief. And most importantly outrageous generosity requires us to remember God’s love and epitomize his grace in our lives and the lives of our neighbors. Indeed, we must begin to create clouds that shower our lives with waters of outrageous generosity. The seeds of change will only be planted and sprout once every one of us realizes our responsibilities to each other and the greater needs that surpass the trivial wants of materialism. We must begin by identifying causes that motivate us, causes that are far greater than our immediate self-interest and more importantly causes that propel our convictions like a ceaseless whirling wind of God’s justice. In addition, to transform the individualistic despair that flows through all aspects of American society there must be a strong willingness to promote outrageous generosity so that it may flow to all facets of our lives. It must become part of the political, economic and social realms of society. It must become part of our religion because then the disconcertion brought about from hunger, homelessness, poverty, war and greed will be met with a bolder force of social justice, which can only be achieved through elements of outrageous generosity. Even more, in this essential quest we will realize and begin to understand that “life’s most urgent and persistent questions is, what are you doing to help others.” |
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