Day 85: Givers and Takers

Reading: Psalm 37:21-31

There is a strong difference between the righteous and the godly according to this passage. Givers and takers. In life, it is inevitable that you will come across both at some point. There are those who may approach you and you know you can expect good to come out of your time together. You will be poured into by that person, and you may feel mutual about pouring into them. Then there are people you may know who will want to get together who take. They might demean the way you do something, stretch you thin on time, or drain you financially, but you never quite feel as confident about meeting with them.
The question that remains then is, which person are you? When you see yourself through the eyes of others, do you encourage them, or drain them? What evidence do you have to tell you either way? I'm sure we all have moments of being both types of people at some points, but overall, where do you fall on the scale?


Reading: Luke 6:12-36

Being generous to those we love and even like is one thing, but being generous and giving to those we may despise and who may despise us is a whole other concept to grasp. When Jesus begins His sermon on the mount here, we read it began with being generous. This is so important to God, no matter who we feel like being generous to or not. Jesus offers up some pretty crazy-sounding words when He talks about giving someone who steals from you more, or turning your cheek to someone who slaps the other one. This could be very hard for people to grasp. When we come from a society of moving ourselves up the ladder and trying to get all we can to achieve success, it may seem near impossible to be generous to the people who try to get on our way of doing that. Jesus says to reach out to the people who we feel take away from us. Give them more. This is an absolute insane concept to our society. Why would we ever help our enemies achieve? However, when we look back at the passage in Psalms we read today, we are reminded of the people we need to be. And Jesus reiterate this here.


Reading: Numbers 21:4-22:20

The people of Israel had still not learned their lesson about complaining. God once again punishes them for their lack of faith, this time with poisonous snakes. Once the people admit their wrongdoing, the snakes are taken away and God gives the people who were bitten a chance to live by looking at a bronze snake up on a pole. This symbol is very similar to that of looking to Jesus on the cross to save us from the poison in our lives. We can spend our lives as takers, and God may teach us a lesson here and there, but in the end, we can repent and look to Him, the Giver of life. When we turn to Him, that is the beginning of a new life of giving. Giving to others, giving to Him. Living a life in Him is living a life of giving back. The people of Israel had to struggle with this over and over again, even after seeing God's greatness many times. We as Christians will struggle with this over and over. But much like the Israelites were continued to be led by God, and never left by Him, God will never leave us, no matter how many times we fail.


We quickly learn in life that there are two types of people- the givers and the takers. We can be either of those at any given time, but when we fail, we can see that God is always there to pick us up again and lead us in a life of giving. May we strive to be the givers of the world, and keep giving to even those who may continue to take.