Generosity - Generous with your time 

Over the next three weeks, the Dover Town Benefice Churches will be thinking about generosity. In this reflection, Team Rector, Reverend Melissa Carter looks at generosity with our time and thinks on the Gospel of Luke, chapter 10, verses 25-37.

Time is something that we often take for granted - it just happens. We only really think about it when we feel like we don’t have enough of it or it seems to be either dragging or flying by. Have you ever asked yourself how God wants us to use it?

God created time and the rhythm of a day right at the start of creation in Genesis 1, verses 4-5. God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness night and there was evening and morning, the first day.

Within a day we have a rhythm that helps to sustain us, there will be some form of routine to the time we take to eat, sleep, work, rest, spend time with family and time on our own. We may have particular times in a day that we set aside for God, times when we come to church, when we pray at home. But in his letter to the Corinthians Paul says whatever you do, do all the glory of God. He is talking here about how we should use our time. God gave us free will so we are able to do anything. But not everything is beneficial or constructive. We should reflect on what we are doing with our time and how our actions affect others. How often do you ask God, ‘What should I do?’ when you find yourself in a particular situation be it in your ordinary daily life or something new.

In our gospel reading we see the question, ‘what should I do’ play out in three peoples' responses. A man is travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he is attacked by robbers and left injured by the side of the road. Three people pass him. The first, a priest, sees him and passes by, so too does a Levite, and then a Samaritan comes along, sees the injured man and has compassion. He binds up his wounds, gives him something to drink them puts him on his own donkey and takes him to a nearby inn, and spends the night with him because it is the next day that he gives the innkeeper some money to take care of him until he returns.

It can be very difficult to decide what we should do with the limited number of hours we have. In this passage if the priest and Levite were going off to the temple, others were waiting for them and expecting them to carry out their duties which they could not do if they were delayed or made unclean by touching the man's wounds.

This isn’t something we should just dismiss as being an excuse because it was important but we are not just choosing between two things we could do. Here is someone right in front of them needing urgent help. How should we act if we are to act with compassion and generosity? We may have to make decisions similar to this, not hopefully dealing with someone who has been attacked, but the key word in this passage is that they all saw the man, it wasn’t like they hadn’t noticed him.

In today's world we may physically be in the presence of people in need but we also see need from a distance through a television screen or phone. Today we don’t even have to answer the phone before we know who is ringing - their name comes up on screen, you see the name and then choose whether to answer or not. How many of us have seen the name and not answered because we have thought, ‘I don’t have time for them at the moment’ knowing that they are going through something which means they will need to talk for a while.

Yes, time is precious and it often feels like there is not enough of it, but where does that pressure come from? If God created time and is a generous God full of compassion then surely there should always be time for compassion. Could it be that the problem is not with the time God has given us, but with us filling our diaries too much or giving events and situations greater importance than they should have and we need to get them done.

Corrie Ten Boom, a Christian, who alongside her family helped Jews escape the Nazi’s Holocaust during World War II, once said, “if the devil can’t make you bad, he’ll make you busy”. Both sin and busyness have the same effect. they cut us off from our connection with God, other people and even our own soul as we begin to accept our own excuses.

Another error we make is that we think of time as being ours to do what we want with, it’s our free time, our family or work commitments, our task to complete. But when we look to Jesus for an example of how to use time, we see that he uses it generously but he also asked others to join him and help. The disciples were sent out to teach, heal and baptise.

The Samaritan did not do everything on his own, he stopped, took time to tend the man’s wounds in the immediate moment, walked him to an inn and cared for him until the next day. Then, presumably having to go and do whatever it was he was originally on his way to do he sought help from the innkeeper, asking him to continue the care until he returned.

We don’t need to do everything, it could be that we give a small amount of time to direct someone to a professional who has the skills they need. If we do need to go to something else that is important or urgent can we contact someone else to come and help with whatever is needed. And have you ever noticed that if you have a set amount of time in your diary because you think that is what you will need to complete a specific task, if something comes up, a friend calls or knocks at the door and you give them the time they need, when you return to the task you actually end up finishing it quicker than you expected, or something else gets shuffled around or cancelled to gift you extra time in another part of your diary. Taking time to consider someone else’s situation is something we should be willing to do and even though the world may not always thank you for giving your time in this way, God does.

As disciples, we too follow Jesus’ commission to share the gospel message with others, the good news of Jesus opening up to us salvation and a relationship with God. Jesus sacrificed himself out of generous love. His time on earth ran out at 33 but his whole purpose of coming into the world was to die for our sins, we saw that just last week as we remembered the wise men bringing him myrrh at his birth, something that would one day be used to anoint his body in death. But throughout his life we read so regularly in scripture the words, ‘Jesus saw the people and had compassion on them’ and this gives his work its deeper meaning for us. We are not called to die for others but we are called to love them with sacrificial compassion.

Jesus being generous with his time, being with others, gives the gospel message its power. It isn’t just about getting the job done, it is about relationship. God is Trinity, we are his church and we are all part of God’s creation, the body of Christ, a community built by God’s light shining on needs that are hidden, a compassionate love which calls us to act and a living faith that glorifies God by being generous with our time because we recognise it as a gift from God.