Giving and Receiving

I spent thirty years as a minister encouraging people to be generous in their giving to the church as well as outside the church. I was and am still convinced a generous approach to life is its own reward and the more generous we are the more generosity we experience in return. I thought over thirty years of this type of teaching had lead me to know just about all there is to know about a generous spirit but a refresher course never hurts.

Almost nightly I encourage our customers to donate to The Building Conservation Trust. Bay Flats Lodge matches whatever they give and all of this goes to creating, maintaining and resorting fishing habitat on the Central Texas Coast. Recently after asking a large group of customers to give, one man held up his credit card and waved me over. He said I want to give 500.00 Dollars. While this isn’t the largest donation we have ever had it is certainly substantial. I asked him what motived this generous gift and his response caught me off guard. He was kind enough to compliment my short speech asking for donations and then said I made a choice some time back to live with a generous attitude. I kept finding myself angry because everyone continually asked for donations. I didn’t want to be angry all the time so I decided to give every time I could and to do so with a smile believing I would be blessed because of my approach. 

Now there is an approach to life we can all learn from. Make a choice to live as generously as possible believing that generosity will rebound to you. 

One more note. The gentleman said last year my company did one million dollars in business. This year were on pace to do 100 million. I wouldn’t bet on this approach making your business explode but I would tell you the benefit to your own happiness and contentment will be immeasurable.