I am troubled at the state of my heart.

Until recently, I had very limited income and spent a long time disciplining my heart to give my widow's mite to as many people as I could. Not long ago, though, I started working. Suddenly, I have more than enough for my monthly needs. And yet, I find a strange inversion in my heart. Now, rather, I am beginning to hedge and hoard. When it is time to give, I calculate and check my expense sheet and hum and haw until finally, my giving has dropped though it should have increased. Not only that: my heart has grown uglier, judging beneficiaries and being prejudiced and expecting gratitude and deference.

Unfortunately, I know that I am not alone. Giving is so hard for us as humanity. Romans 5:7 exposes that even for a good man, we find it hard to die. That is how stingy human beings are. No wonder God is not too impressed with merely human giving. Too often, we hold back rather than pour forth; when we do give, it is usually giving the wrong things (Gen. 4:5) to the wrong people (Matt. 7:6; Prov. 9:8) with the wrong motives (Prov. 23:6-8) in the wrong way (Lev. 10:1) without sufficient love (1 Cor. 13:3). Our sacrifices fall short and are only made acceptable through Christ (1 Pet. 2:5). We must be taught how to give what God wants.

At Christmas, though, all of us are forced to re-consider how God gives, as He exposes the imperfections of our generosity. When we were least ready and most undeserving, God gave His greatest gift in a most unexpected way. Unto us a Son was given and a Saviour was born. Joy to the whole world came through a single gift that has kept giving and will keep giving till the end of time. Jesus Himself gave in an unprecedented way (2 Cor. 8:9) and rightly counsels that in order for us to be sons of our Father in heaven, we must learn to give as He does. So what can we learn from how our Father gives?

How God Gives

1. God Gave First

Some ugliness can creep into our hearts when we are givers. There is a weird power trip that gets off on making people beg for it, hearing them tell their long stories though knowing all the while the point of it. We want to be implored, even if just for a second, so that we can play God. But God did not play God with us. For a gift better than we could ever imagine to ask, He took the initiative of giving first. He loved us first, and therefore gave us first. Our prayer (asking) could not have released Jesus. He was a gift that could only ever be given freely, without coercion or even supplication. So when the right time had fully come (Gal. 1:4), God gave His Son. In the angelic visitations preceding and surrounding the birth, in the shimmering star catching the attention of the Magi, even in the witness of the Spirit in Simeon and Anna, God was announcing a free gift, given first, of His own volition: giving what He knew we needed without our having to plead for it. Might this not curtail our desire to be asked before we give?

2. God Gave the Best

Secondly, God gave the best He could possibly give. We all get a little too familiar with the Cain/Abel story to pay too much attention to the lesson, but isn't there a creeping temptation to give a little less than we actually could, especially when we know we can get away with it? Ananias and Sapphira fell heavily into this trap, and paid an expensive price for it. Not God. Pondering every single human problem -- including the seemingly weightier matters of pain, death, bad things happening to good people and vice versa -- led to the provision of the best possible solution...and this was Jesus. He is every answer, now and forever. So God was intentional about giving the best He could possibly give. Somehow, Mary -- who could have been the least appreciative -- was the most grateful. She recognized in the inconvenience of a virgin pregnancy, the demonstration of God's power for exalting the humble and humbling the proud. Zechariah's song of praise is also beautiful, and it is a passage that has been ringing in my spirit this season. He saw in Christ and foreshadowed by John, the fulfillment of God's promises of a deliverer from our enemies (both spiritual and physical) to facilitate our worship of God. They praised because they recognized that God had given His best. What about us? Can we begin to challenge ourselves to grow in giving until we can be commended like the Macedonian churches (2 Cor. 8:1-3)?

3. God Gave Even When It Was Unappreciated

Next, I am amazed that God gave though His gifts might not be appreciated. Sometimes we feel ashamed to give the little we have, and because we think that the recipient may not appreciate it, we would rather not give at all. Other times, our giving is a real sacrifice and we expect the beneficiaries to recognize the discipline it took for us to give. We expect a thank you. But neither now nor in the days of the original Christmas does God base His gifts to us on our appreciation. In fact, the mark of His giving is that He gives even to those who would be and are in fact unthankful (Lk. 6:35). Herod and Jerusalem, far from being grateful, were deeply troubled at the news of God's gift (Matt. 2:3). Herod sought to stamp it out and destroy every evidence of the child (Matt. 2:16). Even more interestingly, Joseph was not particularly excited about the gift either. Having made up his mind to quietly divorce his impregnated betrothed, God needed to intervene with angelic revelations before he changed his mind. But most surprisingly, Zechariah also nearly rejected God's gift to him. I find it surprising because he was a priest, and should have known better. He was offering sacrifices and had been praying with his wife for a child perhaps for several years (Lk. 1:13), so it is stunning that even he was so insensitive as to doubt and almost dismiss the prophecy of God's gift. Despite all these reactions, God still gave His best first. Can we also learn to give even when it might be unappreciated?

4. God Gave in an Unexpected Way

Finally, I see how God gave in such an unexpected way. One difficult lesson I am learning is how to accept God's gifts as gifts. There is a temptation to pigeonhole gifts, to have some preconceived notion of what we consider to be good and bad. But God's ways and thoughts are often not ours (Isa. 55:8,9; 1 Sam. 16:7), and so His gifts are not ours either. Who on earth would have expected the Messiah to come as a baby in a manger, and spend the first years of his life as a refugee? Who would have imagined that the inconvenient impregnation of a virgin was the miracle that would change the whole world? Let us take one further moment to really consider what gifts we give, and understand that it is godly to give in an unexpected way. Sometimes, our real gifts to others are not what we even think. What seems so little to us may well represent God's huge faithfulness to someone. Our money may not even mean as much as our time, our concern, our counsel, a smile, or a phone call to ask how they are doing. One of the greatest gifts I received last year was the prayer of some brethren on my birthday, when I was so despondent that there seemed no end to a dark tunnel I was in. As they prayed over me with joy, not even knowing what was going on with me, I felt a shift in my internal atmosphere. Could our gifts not go beyond the usual, the normal, the expected? Could we be so led by the Spirit as to give exactly what others might need, even if it looks different from what we would package for them?

Though the world's celebration of Christmas is over, the Christian rejoices for the birth of Jesus every day of every year. May these lessons about God's giving transform our attitudes as we share forth the blessings which we have received. Remember, indeed, that he who sows sparingly will reap sparingly (2 Cor. 9:6), both in the quantity and quality of gifts.