day 1366: Giving Back

"And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ."

Whenever a person, or a group of people, do well, others question if they are being generous enough in giving back.  We are seeing it clearly in the Tech industry as a group and I know many individuals who feel very much under attack only because they are doing well.  I have had that same attack from others and all that one can do is do what is right within themselves and then not listen too much to others.  That doesn't mean that we can ignore that we should be generous.  Blogger, Seth Godin, says this about the benefit of being successful and generous:



Here's conventional wisdom:
Success makes you happy. Happiness permits you to be generous.
In fact, it actually works like this:
Generosity makes you happy. Happy people are more likely to be successful.
A good lesson for us all.

Generosity is not all about financial giving. Generosity of spirit is just as important.  That generosity leads to good works, willingness to give time, energy and encouragement.  When others watch what we do, generosity of who we are can be a clear example of our faith.

Reference: Philemon 1:6 (New Living Translation)  

day 926: Billing By The Hour

"For you know the generous act of our lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich."

Anyone who has ever had to engage someone who is in professional services knows what it means to be billed by the hour. There is always that moment when you look at the hourly rate and then gasp.  What usually happens next is you take your own salary and divide it by 2080 (the number of work hours in a year - if 40 hours a week) and make the comparison.  That's when we either see reality or we deny the proposal because we can't make sense of the hourly rate proposed.  I'm personally terrible at setting an hourly rate because I can't charge what the market might say my time is worth because it feels like "too much to ask'.  But, that's just me.  A good exercise inside an organization is to think what would we be doing with our time and people if we thought about every hour being spent as "billable".  No one wants to do this because it is cumbersome but it would be eye-opening, if not eye-popping when completed.  For sure we would be more cognizant of the amount of time we sit in meetings, or worse yet, sit around waiting for a meeting to start.  The billable hour assessment for a week or so can be healthy for an organization.

Paul writes to us of generosity and the encouragement for all of us to be generous in our undertakings and time with other people.  He also tells us that there was one who never considered His time to be billable.  How fortunate we are that God doesn't bill for services rendered as if He did, we could never afford what He has and will do for us.  One way that we can respond to what God has and does do for us is to be generous with our time, talent and treasure to others.  Today, consider that the way we allot what we have to others as our reflection of Christ.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 8:9