Madison Church

The holidays can feel like a collision—warm lights and hard memories, generosity campaigns and a quiet fear that there still won’t be enough. We lean into that tension and ask a harder question: what would it take to move from being inspired by generosity to becoming intentional about it? Starting with Advent’s core meaning—waiting—we explore why “no room at the inn” is more than a nativity detail. It’s a mirror for our scarcity mindset and a signpost to a different economy.We trace the human tendency to mistrust the Host through Genesis: grasping in Eden, rivalry with Cain and Abel, consolidation at Babel, and Abraham and Sarah’s shortcut with Hagar. Each story shows how trying to manufacture blessing unravels us. Then we turn to Israel’s laws of gleaning in Deuteronomy, where God reorders life around margin—leave something for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow. This is practical, local, and relational generosity, built on memory: remember slavery, remember redemption, and let remembrance shape ho