I found my heart for Giving Tuesday through these words, "Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours." - Teresa Avila
Causes,  Holidays

Giving Tuesday

December 1, 2015 /

Today we started Advent, marking days toward the celebration of the greatest gift mankind has ever known, celebrating the birth of Christ. How fitting that this year, today is also Giving Tuesday.

We follow days of gluttony and excess, perhaps self-absorption and consumption with a sweet day of being focused on doing good.

How do you find your heart for Giving Tuesday?

Giving Tuesday only started a few years ago, but is growing as more and more people recognize that we need to focus outside of ourselves.

While, a calendar day set to tell you to give can make it feel compulsory, God doesn’t specify what to give or who to give to, He  just says how – joyfully.

2 Corinthians 9:7 ESV  “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

We give because He gave to us.

As a faithful steward of what God has given me, I use Charity Navigator to research charities to make sure they are really doing good things with the money we entrust to them.

And I give prayerfully, I can’t control the gift once it leaves my hands, but sometimes God asks us to have faith in the giving. We give to the struggling single mom who has taken her first baby-steps into Christ, or the homeless man who might not use it wisely. Sometimes God just says give.I found my heart for Giving Tuesday through these words, "Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours." - Teresa of Avila

Thinking about the beautiful watershed of grace covering me in His eyes through the blood of His son, Jesus, how could I not give, to share that joy by being the hands and feet of Christ.

Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours- Teresa of Avila Click To Tweet

I’m reminded of a poem, written in the 1500s by St. Teresa of Avila.

Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

I can only pray that people hear Him in my words, see Him in my hands. This poem has written itself across my heart as a reminder of my real place in this world.

If I want the world to see Jesus is real, I have to be their window into who He is.

And I strive to be a better friend, neighbor, mother. I want to be His hands when someone is struggling with a heavy door at the library or His heart when we sat and prayed at Pizza Hut for the person who stole the money out of my wallet,  “if their need was great, that the money bless them, that God would open their heart to Jesus. To help us forgive.”

Even though Giving Tuesday is technically over, giving isn’t a day, or even a season, it is a constant place of knowing what a gift we’ve been given and just wanting to share it.

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