Hoarding

I was skimming through my most recent reading of Wide Awake by Erwin McManus and found I had highlighted a single sentence on a page. Normally it's a paragraph, but this sentence really stood out to me.

"To waste what God has put in you is a dishonor to God and a disservice to humanity."

Wow. You can look at that as wasting or throwing away, or you can look at it as hoarding. When God gives you a gift, fills you with experiences, places ideas and wisdom and knowledge and direction into your brain and you don't give it away to help others, you're hoarding. I think wasting is more like getting rid of it. But if we don't use it, it's still there, we just choose not to share it. It's a selfish kind of behavior. It's an attitude of "It's mine, all mine, and I'm not sharing. I'm not going to let you see it. I'm not going to talk about it or show it to you. And you certainly can't be blessed by it!"

God didn't create us to hoard. He created us to give. We're told to give away our faith, our possessions, our hospitality, our experiences. I've talked about spiritual gluttony before. It's when you take in and don't exercise it back out by giving it to others.

In Erwin's quote, he says we are dishonoring God and being a disservice to humanity. Strong words, but so true. How much better would humanity be if everyone shared what they had? I would bet there would be no homeless, no hungry, no emotionally starved. What do you have to give away?

Blessings on this perfect Wednesday.