Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy; do not desire his delicacies, for he is like one who is inwardly calculating. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. –Proverbs 23:6,7
God warns us about certain people whose paths we will cross in life, who we are to be wary of. People who are stingy represent everything that Christ is not. Our Heavenly Father is a giving God “ … He gave His only begotten son …” (John 3:16) When it came to saving sinful mankind, God presented His very best. He withheld nothing.
When Jesus fed 5,000 people with a few fish and loaves, twelve baskets of leftovers remained. Did He miscalculate? Did His sovereignty not apply to food? Was He being a poor steward? Or did this reflect His Father’s character of total abundance?
The miser here in Proverbs stands in direct opposition to the Christian in 2 Corinthians 9 who is a cheerful giver. The miser is self-focused. Anything he does he does so with calculation. How does this best benefit me? What reward can I receive for my investment? His heart is not for others because he only has room for one person in his heart … himself.
The focus of those who are generous is completely different. While the miser is scheming, giving people are simply looking to bless what God wants to bless. Although the context of generosity is usually money, there are many other ways where we can give to people. In this present state of spiritual darkness, one of the greatest things we can offer is encouragement. I have observed people who risked only to fall in failure. Emotional misers crack jokes, comment on how they knew he couldn’t do it. Small-minded people who would never have enough courage in themselves to risk the same effort, take delight in the failures of others, somehow thinking it justifies their own mediocrity.
Others’ miserliness is manifest in their insecurity. They want people to do things exactly like they do them. They expect friends to homeschool just like them, use the same curriculum as they do, and join the same cooperative activities. If someone does it even a little bit differently, they take little negative jabs at them. Oh, they may sound spiritual enough in their “concerns,” but the reality is they resent it when individuals work out their own homeschooling salvation with fear and trembling. The bottom line is they are stingy with grace.
The miser eventually starts to experience the Law of Diminishing Returns. Regardless of how much they have, if someone else has more, they are unhappy. The more they have the more they want and the less content they are. Thus, it is for the miser.
Along with the 2 R’s, we parents want to teach the truly important lessons in life like being generous. What language do we hear around our house? Is it pick, pick, pick or is it grace, grace, grace? How do the older ones treat the younger ones and vice-versa? How do the brothers talk to their sisters, and vice-versa? These responses manifest what level of emotional generosity we have in our homeschooling walk.
What other areas can we be generous in? Stay for the Sunday morning service at the ICHE Homeschooling Conference that runs from May 30 to June 2 and you will find out!
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