Impulsive generosity
Impulsiveness is generally looked upon as a negative trait. We tend to honor thoughtful and intentional actions, moves that have been carefully planned. Acting on impulse is often seen as hasty, reckless, and immature. But, for the last few months, I’ve been trying to let one particular kind of impulsiveness happen in my life – impulsive generosity.
It all started when I read the book 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by a British journalist named Oliver Burkeman. He writes about living intentionally in our short and mortal life. One of the recommendations at the end of the book stayed with me: cultivating instantaneous generosity.
He writes:
“Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind—to give money, check in on a friend, send an email praising someone’s work—act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later. When we fail to act on such urges, it’s rarely out of mean-spiritedness, or because we have second thoughts about whether the prospective recipient deserves it.”
So often, we do not act on our impulse to kindness or generosity because we think we’ll have time to do it later, or because something seemingly more important needs to be done, or we want to wait until it can be done ideally. But the reality is that done is better than perfect, and often we just never get around to it.
It’s not that we don’t have the impulse to be generous with our words or resources – but so often we just get distracted by all the other stuff that demands our attention. So, given our limited life and full days, it’s best to do it immediately, right when we think about it. Act impulsively upon our generosity, our compassion, our kindness.
Jesus lived with his own impulsive and reckless generosity, repeatedly responding to the needs of those around him right away with urgent mercy and hasty compassion – from beggars to blind men to bleeding women. In Mark’s gospel, the word “immediately” is used 35 times. Jesus didn’t wait until the perfect moment to forgive or to feed or to heal or put it off while he did more important things, he just responded right away.
While some impulses need taming in our lives, kindness is not one of them. For us as followers of Jesus, cultivating instantaneous generosity might be just the way to bring more goodness to others, and ourselves, immediately.
Vicki Felger
Beautifully perfect!
Quentin Fleming
When the Spirit nudges, do it!