2 Corinthians 8:1-9

…their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. (2 Corinthians 8:2)

If you’re into using Twitter, you may be familiar with the hashtag #firstworldproblems. For those of you who don’t use Twitter or social media, a hashtag gets used to describe a thought or statement kind of like using air quotes when speaking to someone. So I might tweet something like: I spilled my latte on my iPad and now I have to tweet from my phone.  I’d then use the hashtag #firstworldproblems to indicate that this is a dilemma that is not a concern in the lives of those living in impoverished countries.

Paul writes of the Macedonian’s extreme poverty overflowing in generosity. For those of us who have the luxury of spilling lattes, this is a completely oxymoronic concept. How can generosity, let alone abundant joy, flow out of poverty? 

Greed fools us into thinking that an abundance of stuff makes us happy and that an accumulation of resources is what makes generosity possible. Once we believe that, greed's next move is to prevent us from being generous with our resources by fooling us into believing that enough is never enough. 

The season of Lent reminds us that we worship a God of amazing grace whose story of abundance begins with the creation of the universe out of nothing and culminates in bringing life out of death.The source of our hope and the reason for our proclamation is an empty tomb!

 

P.S. While we're on the subject of hashtags, use #unlessagrain to share your Lenten reflections!