17 June 2015 - every grace abundant

Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.

We probably think we're doing good since we aren't out blowing trumpets before us when we do good things. We aren't praying on the street corners just so that people can see us and marvel at our holiness. We are probably tempted to tell people about the fasting we undertake but perhaps we hold back. We keep what our right hand is doing from our left hand, knowing that our left won't be able to shut up about it.

Yet we are called to reflect on our motives for our giving and for our prayer.

And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

Do we give because it pleases our Father? Or is it more because we need to have a certain self-image? We know that "good Christians" do these things and so we do them. This isn't wrong, exactly, but it is imperfect. It is something a little less than love to try to polish our own self-image. The implication is that if we give and pray than we deserve to be seen a certain way. Then, when we don't tell people about our pious deeds and alms and prayer it isn't just humility that is motivating us. We know that they should see us as pious and that they would if we just told them. We become smug even in the very fact of not telling them. Which is not to say that we should rush out and tell them and brag about our deeds. Instead, we should seek a more pure motive. The only way to find a more pure motive than our tainted ones is for God himself to motivate us. Motives that come from within tend to be self-serving. It makes sense, doesn't it? But as Christians filled with the Holy Spirit we have another source of motivation, a better source, a higher source.

Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you,
so that in all things, always having all you need,
you may have an abundance for every good work.

Every good work? How can we have enough for that? It is not every work imaginable. That is our pride talking, insisting that we must be the ones to individually save the world. Instead, we have an abundance for the "good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (cf. Eph. 2:9). These works are specifically prepared for us by God. Whether it seems like they are within our reach or not we can be sure that God will give us all we need to accomplish them.

You are being enriched in every way for all generosity,
which through us produces thanksgiving to God

Then we shall be the one whom the psalmist describes and not like the hypocrites.

Lavishly he gives to the poor;
his generosity shall endure forever;
his horn shall be exalted in glory.

God loves a cheerful giver. The source of that joy is not within ourselves. He is the one who supplies and increases all that we need.

Light shines through the darkness for the upright;
he is gracious and merciful and just.