Generosity

A Generosity Story: How a Single Mom Benefitted from the Sale of an Office Building

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Starting Point: The Zenith building in downtown Sarasota sells for $24 Million in January.

Generosity Step #1: The Zenith decides to give away thousands of dollar’s worth of furniture and equipment in the 12-story building to area nonprofits. Two of our staff make a visit and claim tables and chairs valued at $8,000.

Generosity Step #2: Sunshine Movers, who donates their time/truck/employees to assist nonprofits, picks up the donated furniture from The Zenith and delivers it to our administration office.

Generosity Step #3: Rather than discard the gently used furniture in our counseling offices The Zenith donations replaced, we look for another nonprofit to donate them to. Six days later we respond to a Facebook post sharing the need for furniture for an apartment for a single mom and her child.

Generosity Step #4: Two staff members of Hope City Church that partners with our Center offer their time and trucks to deliver the furniture to the nonprofit. Tonight, this apartment now has a couch, loveseat, and five accessory chairs.

It took several decisions made by several people to keep the generosity going long enough that a mother and her daughter feel more at home, feel comfort, feel cared for, feel loved, and feel seen.

Generosity starts with one decision. It also ends with one decision. Let’s keep making the right one.

Be The One To Transform Lives

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Today starts an incredible philanthropic event for the region where I live in Florida. The event is a fundraiser for over 700 nonprofits that serve multiple counties. The online event will raise millions of dollars, all made possible by the generosity of two foundations: Community Foundation of Sarasota County and The Patterson Foundation. You can read all about it on the event website: Giving Challenge.

Samaritan Counseling Services of the Gulf Coast, where I am the Community Care Director, is fortunate to be one of these nonprofits. 2024 marks Samaritan’s 25th anniversary. We celebrated last month at our annual luncheon and received tremendous support. We are grateful to have this opportunity to broaden our reach so that more folks can help support Samaritan’s mission to instill hope and transform lives through providing professional mental health services.

Samaritan’s goals for this 24-hour event include $25,000 and 160 donors. I invite you to be part of transforming lives by giving your gift on my personal fundraising page. Every gift between $25-$100 will be matched. We serve thousands of individuals and families each year. Your gift today will support the transformation that happens every day in our offices as our counselors walk with their clients. Thank you for considering joining our team to transform a life.

The event opens at Noon today and is open through Noon tomorrow (EST). Here’s the link to give: https://www.givingchallenge.org/p2p/335581/john-gregory-0540a77e-08ce-4982-bd2a-6140d0f10f39

Making Faith Complete

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I don’t know that it matters how long someone has been a professing Christian to wonder why you still have thoughts like this one: “Is my faith good enough?” Or maybe, “Am I doing this right?”

I just read a line from a devotional that might help us all, whether you’re fresh in or a long hauler.

Was Abraham’s faith a faith without deeds? No way, says James. Abraham trusted God so much he was willing to sacrifice his son (Genesis 22). His faith was not only a conviction about the existence of God; it was a conviction that was ‘made complete,’ that is, shown to be true faith, by his deeds of devotion. And so was fulfilled the statement of Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” To believe in God in the biblical sense, argues James, involves a commitment to action.

James 2, Worldly Favouritism (YouVersion)

99.9% of us will never be asked to carry out Abraham’s test. But if we’re attempting to communicate daily with the Holy Spirit, we are asked to do ordinary faith deeds every day. When we do, our faith is being made complete.

For example…

  • When we hold our tongue from gossiping
  • When we don’t return hate
  • When we respect our elders
  • When we love the unlovely
  • When we are generous with our time
  • When we say yes in spite of our fear or rebellion
  • When we have compassion for a stranger in pain
  • When we weep with those who weep

This list could go on and on. The meaningful and encouraging word from this devotion was that my faith may not be perfect, but that’s not the point. The point is that it’s active.

At the end of each day, may we look back to see where our faith was active and hear a whispered, “In you I am well pleased. Your faith is complete.”

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Leaving Secrets

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Posthumous secrets.

Some are good. We find out things that the person did that mattered, that impacted, that altered courses, that showered generosity without attention. We read things they wrote, produced, created that uncover meaning. The world is blessed by unexpected surprise.

Some aren’t good. We find out things that the person did that shocks, that hurts, that damages, that produces unanswerable questions. We hear things they chose, hid, manufactured that defy understanding. The world is grayed by unexplainable bewilderment.

May we live lives that leave good secrets.

Photo by Nathan Hanna on Unsplash

Looking for Gold

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I heard this quote today during a webinar:

“Men are developed the same way gold is mined. When gold is mined, several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold; but one doesn’t go into the mine looking for dirt—one goes in looking for the gold.” -Andrew Carnegie

My mind immediately tried to connect this thought to scriptures like Job 23, Psalm 66, and Zechariah 13. But the context isn’t the same. These writers were referring to the outcomes of testing by fire. The imagery of mining for gold brings out a different challenge, even opportunity.

The webinar focused on a style of coaching labeled compassionate. Bottom-line premise: approach coaching as both you and the coachee looking for gold. Expect dirt moving to be necessary, but be more focused on the gold to be found.

Brene Brown would call this generosity. Regardless of whether we call it generous or compassionate, what might happen if we all approached our relationships and conversations, including self-talk, with such focus? It could impact…

  • …how we give employees annual reviews.
  • …how we discipline our children.
  • …how we chat with our neighbors.
  • …how we engage gossip.
  • …how we receive, “I’m sorry.”
  • …how long we coddle anger.
  • …how we analyze guilt.
  • …how we pursue dreams.
  • …how we set goals.
  • …and most impactfully, how we surrender to God’s testing.

Here’s to better and deeper gold looking!

Offering Generosity

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For my second favorite takeaway from Dare to Lead, I’m going to part three entitled “Braving Trust.” This part focuses on the process of trust. Brown’s team identified seven behaviors that make up trust’s anatomy, which she came up with the acronym BRAVING to define. Those seven behaviors are:

  1. Boundaries
  2. Reliability
  3. Accountability
  4. Vault
  5. Integrity
  6. Nonjudgment
  7. Generosity

After reading the definitions and unpacking of these seven, the one that most challenged me was #7. Read this definition, and you might see why:

Generosity: You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others.

There are so many opportunities for us to make up what we think other’s intentions are, why they said what they said, or did what they did. And many of them aren’t based on generosity. Many are based on our shallow trust levels.

So here are scenarios where I’ve put this to the test since reading this:

  • When someone doesn’t return my call/voicemail/text/email in the time I think they should
  • When someone appears to have over promised…again
  • When someone clearly didn’t read all the details of my email
  • When someone gives the wrong impression, in my opinion

See what I mean? All these scenarios have potentially opposite outcomes when I practice generosity. Generosity deepens trust and diminishes suspicion or accusation.

Generosity is a gift that can come in various packages. Here’s to offering it more every day.