{Day Twenty-Six} :: Cut Wide Margins

I have to admit to borrowing today's title from a sermon our senior pastor preached this summer. It was one in a series on generosity, and while I'd love to give you a point-point-by-point breakdown of the most challenging sermon I've heard in a while, I'll give you the basic point: generous people cut wide margins in their lives.

They leave enough room for others. They don't hold so tightly to things that they can't offer with an open hand what others need. They don't schedule life so fully or completely that there isn't time to offer to someone who really needs a shoulder to lean on. They don't control so much of life that they can't go with the flow when God calls.

A lot of the lessons I learned from my family were ones I'd seen modeled but couldn't really define until I grew up. And this is one of them.

Mom and Dad know the language of love is sacrifice and service. They also know the heart of a servant is the fruit of abiding in Christ. And they know you need wide margins - in your time, your money, your other resources - to live out those things.

Though I didn't know exactly what they were doing when I was a child, I can see now how obvious, how wide their margins were. And I pray my husband and I have the same attitude toward our own home, resources, time and even money they have toward theirs.

In the next couple days I'll share with you ways I've seen wide margins in my parents' life. Before then, consider this: do you cut wide margins in your own life? If so, tell me how. If not, what margins could stand to be a little wider?