Cincinnati was the destination for this holiday weekend. "The Queen City," "The Queen of the West," "The Blue Chip City," "The City of Seven Hills" and "Porkopolis", "Cincy," "Cinci," "Cinti", "The 'Nati." or "The Dirty Nati", "Cin-City", "The Nasti Nati." Call it what you will, this place has great ice cream.

I just watched a 60 Minutes clip about Dikembe Mutombo spending $8 million to help build a hospital in his native country, Republic of the Congo. It's really great to hear about people giving back to where they came from, especially if it's someone giving a large sum of money to help those in need.

I do admit, though, that sometimes those encouraging thoughts are accompanied by feelings of frustration. During Mutombo's NBA career he made probably at least ten times that much money. Maybe this is just coming from an ignorant, not-wealthy college student, but why not give another $8 million dollars and build a second hospital? In fact, why not build 8 or 9 more while you're at it? In Shane Claiborne's book, Irresistible Revolution, he mentioned that maybe it's not how much you give, rather how much you're left with. What if that is how God measures true generosity? It's hard for me not to believe that God values generosity with sacrifice on our end somehow attached.

The flip side that I often fall into is that I have so little that it really doesn't matter whether I give my $20 or $30 to the Church. But if I have the mindset that I'm called to give what I can (check out this great story), it changes my whole mindset. I heard Steve Garber recently say that if we focus on impacting just what is in our proximity, it is easier to not get overwhelmed with the big picture. Let that sink in for a second.