Week 14: Give - The secret of Living is Giving

I remember when I was a little boy during dinner time with my family; my mother would sometime fry chicken's wings and chicken's drumsticks as our 'grand' menu. We are moderate family, nor that I want to use the word 'poor' because at least we have shelter, clothes and foods(!!!), most of the time we would eat 'paku-pakis' (fern shoot etc), bamboo shoot and maybe if fortunate- some fishes and meats. So when mother fried chicken, that's when I and my brother would be having 'eating competition'.

Because mother didn't distributed fried chickens during dinner, more than often me and my brother would quarrel on who will get the last piece! The rule was "we cannot take another piece until we finished the previous piece". Just because he's older than me (I can't explain how that could be a problem), my brother would finished first, then he took another one... so I took another one too... then he took one... then me... then him again... and so on. I bet I count it all, and he was always the 'winner'. I love him very much but 'hate' him during dinner.

Then at one odd moment, when mother would fry chicken again, suddenly there was a very unfamiliar 'happening'. My brother during the 'competition', he took the last piece and places it on my empty plate. My mother don't know what to say neither do I, because since we're kids we always fight, quarrel, fight again and quarrel some more. This acts of giving, really touch my heart (but I didn't refused the last piece), he gives it to me maybe because he was 'tired' of our rivalry, or maybe he loves me or both. As I reflect that moment again, I begin to know why I did that childish act: I'm so into myself that I have no time for others. I only think about how I can gain as many as I can before others get it!

Mother Teresa told a story about the needy poor; she said,

"One night a man came to our house and told me,

'There is a family of eight children. They have not eaten for days.'

I took some food with me and went.

When I came to that family, I saw the faces of those little children disfigured by hunger. There was the pain of hunger in their faces. I gave the rice to the mother. She divided the rice in two, and went out, carrying half the rice.

When she came back I asked her,” Where did you go?'

She gave me this simple answer, 'to my neighbors, they are hungry also!''

Anthony Robbins in his famous book, Awaken the Giant Within lists out 'Contribution' as The Ten Emotions of Power. He writes, "The Secret of living is Giving" What a profound statement from non-Christian writer!

Can you give to those who really need it?
Can you give when everyone is keeping?
Can you give what you had decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion?
Can you give out of love for Christ?

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 9:7, "God loves a cheerful giver!" He loves us that He want to give us eternal life but He's also Righteous that He need to punish our sins; so He gives His one and only Son for us on behalf of our dead sentence so that we can both received and not been punish eternally. Give as He's given not out of expectation to receive it back (but somehow I suspect that my brother wants to claim that fried chicken back someday), but give as our respond to His gracious toward us. "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" (9.15)