I was super challenged and encouraged a few days ago. Partly just because I had some fab quality time with my precious Dad, whose fellowship and character is more valued to me than ever, but also after a meal we took a walk past a chapel in Station Road, Rossett (nr Chester).
I remember visiting as a kid, and sitting in the hard wooden pews when accompanying Dad to preach. At the entrance of the chapel on the outside wall is a memorial stone laid at the opening of the gothic style building by the great man D. L. Moody.
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To this day Balfour is revered in Liverpool who know his legacy and impact on the city. He had such incomprehensibly good impact on society. He famously said...
"Get the young men of Liverpool imbued with Christian principle and adequately taught and trained, and the Liverpool of the future with be a new Liverpool".
He started / funded amongst many things; the seaman's orphanage, institute and sailors home in Duke Street, many educational initiatives including Edge Hill university. The Balfour institute building sadly no longer stands, but his legacy is still referenced by one impressive building... Balfour was the pivotal chairmans of the YMCA and it was his generosity to establish its first proper (purpose built) building which not only richly impacted the city but became a prototype which spread across the world. The building still stands in Mount Pleasant. Until fairly recently it was still providing a home to over 70 homeless friends at a time. The young men's Christian association (YMCA) maybe known (even derided) today for its association with a camp disco song, but before that was something of real worth which changed lives in a deep way and brought real dignity to people. The building was bought by the Hatter group it is now a travel hostel.
True social Historians of that city can't ignore Balfour (1824-1886) and his legacy. His statue still stands amongst the greats of the city (Gladstone, Rathbone, Disraeli) outside the back of St George's hall (St John's gardens.)
However, like many great gospel people of the past (in the UK at least), Balfour is now in danger of being forgotten by newer generations. At least there is a very real danger that he is not remembered accurately. It seems a common current trend to rewrite history on the pretext of an anti christian agenda, forgetting that the foundations of many good things in our society are from Christian and Christ loving ethics. This blog and what follows (maybe other blogs) are a small humble attempt to redress that a little, and take the challenges of Balfour's life to heart for us to live better today in our context.
The great thing is that due to the breadth, purview, and impact Balfour had (which stretches across Liverpool, far into surrounding areas and throughout the globe) no-one can deny either the real history or redeemed heart of this man. That he walked with God who undeniably shaped his character after Christ's own heart, and this is seen in so much concrete evidence and changed lives, changed courses of societies and even nations.
Born into poverty himself into a Godly farming family (1867 Monike, (Forfarshire) his Father was an Elder at church) , Alexander had God's heart for the poor. As he progressed from humble beginnings (apprentice Merchant in Dundee) his heart remained tender to others as His influence, resources and impact grew. Take for example the development of his shipping company Balfour Williamson who were the primary initiators of taking goods to Chile, when others did not see it as economically advantageous to their own purse. Add to this that his personal greater priority was gospel advance. He was motivated not by amassing his own wealth, but driven to use this new Chilean route of success to initiate the taking of the gospel to an unreached nation. Good things came to poor people in Chile because of Balfour's generosity, but the greater wealth story is that how a nation came to have a Christian history and heritage. Today there is a vibrancy in many growing gospel initiatives in Chile. Humanly speaking this stems from one man and his generosity to take the gospel.
This is backed up by numerous other examples, his massive generosity to Liverpool City Mission in infancy, his opening of cocoa bars (and refit pubs) to help dock workers and seamen move away from the pubs and alcoholism and instead take their pay home to their families. Closing a pub to turn it into a place of temperance may not win many friends today but then it did, because people saw how it changed families, reduced crime, diminished violence, rejuvenated a society and a city to become a global, influential hub initiating humanitarian initiatives which spread across the world. His massive impact on education enabled many unskilled poor to have a practical hope and future. At every level this man saw people before profit. For this reason alone even the most cynical in today's world should honour his life and work.
Principally his life demonstrated God at work in two great traits or applications of God's character which peppered his 61 years... compassion and generosity. Exceptional hard work, discipline, creativity, self control and selfless entrepreneurial drive also featured in abundance of course. These qualities also are a great challenge to us to use our allotted days well.
He also experienced many sadnesses in a world far less comfortable than ours;
- the death of his first wife at a young age (he was married 3 times)
- his daughters husband (a surgeon for East India Company dying and leaving her with 12 children,
- His only son from his first marriage (Henry) also a merchant also died in 1854, leaving his two sons to carry on the business before they passed away (1863 before Alexander passed on and 1891 respectively).
Growing in the knowledge of God and his gracious dealings with us is a state of true wealth.
We can all be fatigued by life in a broken world, and life on the ocean was the most brutal of environments in those days. Each of us on the epic transit of life's journey can fill our carry cases ( our memories / emotional hard drives) with bitternesses of how things did not work out as we had hoped. This means we can walk with increasing slowness into the future, laden down with weights we need not carry. Consider Mara (which means bitterness) in the book of Ruth (Ruth 1:20). Our perspective on God's dealings with us personally impacts our future ambitions and abilities, it impacts the rest of our lives and our capacity use them fruitfully. Consider the other side of the coin though, and the rest of God's story in Ruth... (God's provision of bread, a kinsman redeemer full of grace and generosity, an amazing daughter in law's faithfulness, her real identity and calling in the people of God as Naomi (meaning pleasant, delightful, lovely), the ultimate road to Christ and engrafting into His eternal family (Matthew 1:5-6) .
A life in Christ is shaped not by bitterness but the blinding sun of Christ and God's eternally generous love which shapes all of human history. The reality of Christ cheers our face, warms cold hearts, takes our burdens, relieves us of complexities and burdens which are the domain of God alone. His love breaks through all circumstantial clouds and covers both our identities and understandings of our eternal existence, and entire experience. Balfour knew in Christ that the overwhelming perspective on all of his life, was God.
Balfour's work, and dealings happened in the context of God's work and dealings. God's goodness to him and work on him historically, personally and that saving grace in Jesus Christ outshines everything. Christ's incarnation to take on poverty and come for the humble, to live a humble life, to be unerringly obedient and just on our behalf, to lay aside his honour, die, His resurrection and salvation, it is all undeserved for those who respond in faith.
Balfour's attitude to others was therefore not on the basis of merit but grace. Christ's sacrifice for frontier generosity to enemies who were guaranteed to reject Him personally is the model for our generosity. Our undeserving recipiency of His generosity in taking all our sin, giving all his perfection in our place, treating us a heirs not enemies, and exchanging our destructive self-centeredness is incomprehensibly good changes everything. He lavishes on us everything we could not obtain ourselves. He offers a new history in place of a trail of our sinful destruction. He gives us His employment closest to His heart, an opportunity to co-work with Him, so way beyond our ability, credibility, or accomplishment. He has power and resources. He gives it to us and trusts us with the building of His empire and kingdom. He has status which he gives to us, and with all this he shares with us His ability, his instruction, his inner life by His Spirit to live in his gospel, with his people and work together on a global, eternally good plan. God is so good.
God had been so extravagantly generous with Balfour, and so He has with us.
- Is God's goodness the main thing which impacts and summarises your life and mine?
- Do our lives show that we have comprehended just a fraction of how extravagantly generous God has been with us in giving us Christ, and his ongoing loving generosity with us moment my moment, millisecond by millisecond, day by day, year after year ?
- How are we applying the generosity of God in our lives with time and money, our attitude to the unreached, seemingly unredeemable, global initiatives of God ?
Big lessons from Big Alex.
1) GENEROSITY IS FOR THE LIVING NOT THE DEAD.
One of Balfour's great repeated statements and principles (here paraphrased) is that it is easy to be generous with what God has given us when we die... (giving away a legacy is easy, we don't need it then). The true test of our gospel generosity is how willing we are are to give away our wealth (from God, for God) when we are alive.
2) WE CAN NEVER "OUTGIVE" GOD. He gives, and gives, and gives again. In truth, he is especially generous with those who use His gifts wisely and invest for His glory in His kingdom purposes. This not a rpsoperrty gospel, but exactly the opposite - the more we give, the more God enables us to give. The mantra outlined by Wesleys 1787 sermon was common to significant Philanthropist believers of that era ...
"earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can."
It was a great 3 pointer. Wesley's conviction was that many could do the first two but struggled with the latter. Behind generous believers conviction in that era was a careful personal economy not to unduly spend on ourselves (flesh) but a sacrificial desire to channel things into God's work (the work of The SPIRIT). Investing in the bank of eternity and God's economy rather than feeding our immediate passions for comfort and synchronistic self service leads to an altogether different dynamic in life in dependance on GOD not ourselves, whereby we become more alert to God, His purposes and how He provide for them. How He answers prayer becomes more significant when we become passionate that He does. We also learn in prayer how to steward and what would happen to the money or gifts / where the money will be going if and when He does give. A career as a professional kingdom investor should be common to all who know the generosity of God. Saying the church should be missional is like saying a woman should be female. Likewise saying a Christian should be exercised in generosity is like saying those who know God's goodness should know what to do with it. There is a balance in all these things, self care is part of God's stewardship wisdom, but those who are exercised to do more and more for others in love for Christ, suddenly find they have more to give generously with and are more fully used of God in it.
In the next blog, I hope to explore more of today's context and how this applies, and why more than ever these principles need to be thought through. Lord give us your generous heart.
Bible verses for meditation and ponder:
JAMES 1:7 ff
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation...
JAMES 1:17
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.[d] 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
2 CORINTHIANS 9:8
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency at all times, you may abound in every good work.
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