Can we afford to be magnanimous?
Letting divine Love guide me enabled me to trust that my giving would be rightly directed.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, “He who is afraid of being too generous has lost the power of being magnanimous” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 165). This statement has helped me expand my understanding and practice of benevolence as a natural part of my financial planning.
Last year, many nonprofits seemed to struggle to find necessary funding, and my email inbox was flooded with more donation requests than usual. My income, while not huge, is sufficient for me while also enabling me to contribute charitably to various organizations. But since this deluge of appeals represented a far greater need than what I could contribute, I decided to pray about how to proceed.
I began by recognizing that no one in God’s kingdom is left to fend for themselves. Love, a biblical name for God, is naturally generous and ever present. In fact, divine Love is the very source of all good. I prayed not to let a fear of scarcity determine my giving, but to instead recognize God’s guidance as governing my activity—charitable and otherwise. This freed me to donate based on divine direction rather than on a limited pool of funds.
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