As a follow up to my resolution, I had a thought of keeping a record. It's one thing to look back on your year and evaluate it, but it's another to have a yearlong record of how you are doing month by month. A game plan or schedule, if you will. But how does one keep a record of generosity. Perhaps I can keep a tally of how many times I was generous to how many times I had the chance to be generous, but didn't take it. The thought kinda scares me, to see how selfish I really am.

But then there are the difficult situations when you don't know whether you should give or not. I went to Walmart earlier to return a watch Anna had bought that stopped working. Outside the parking lot (just beyond Walmart's property) there were two men out holding a sign that said they were homeless and needed help. Should I believe them, or should I not believe them? Does it matter that I saw the same two people at another store across town the night before? Or that they had winter coats and bdu's that were warmer than my own? I don't have an answer. If you're wondering what I did, I didn't help the men, but I donated the watch money to one of our missionary familes. A different time there was a guy begging like that and I asked him if he was willing to work. He said he was, so I took him to the church and gave him the money that I was making that day for some manual labor. Turns out he wasn't quite as out of gas as what he had originally been claiming (he had more than half a tank, which was more than I had) but he did work for a while so I bought him more gas.

Or here is another actual case: at church I had $100 bill in my wallet when they passed around a collection plate for community family assistance. I wanted to give, but $100 is a lot of money right now. My response was not to give it. Was it the right one? Right now I'm saying no.

So what is my score as of tonight? Including tithes and excluding the two homeless guys, I'm at at 4 smileys to 1 frown. I want to keep giving more and more, but then I wonder when do you run out of money for your own needs? I think the thing that makes it even more difficult is that I'm not on my own anymore. I would be ok if I gave extra money and then couldn't afford to pay for the internet or anything more than ramen. I think I might be ok with that. But Anna wouldn't be ok with that. She needs extra protein. She uses the internet every night after work. This is probably part of what Paul was talking about when he wished everyone was single so they could be devoted to ministry. I think I'll read Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. I picked it up somewhere a couple of years ago, but I've never actually read it. Now seems like a good time.

In Other News...
The Pretender has some of the most interesting character dynamics of any tv show I've seen.