the secret

I read Lizzy's blog this morning. Liz is one of my dear friends who has a knack for words. Melody does as well. So do Sam Hill and Molly Bryant and Brett Mach. I eagerly read their blogs a little for the content but a lot for the way that they are able to fashion words into thoughts with a skill that reminds me of a glass-maker coaxing sand into glass. Other people certainly write well and interestingly, but these people have this subtle... something. I'll call it a knack.

Liz wrote about her new friend Bob; click here to read it. As I was reading her story of her interaction with this man, I realized that when she chose to give him something, she received way more than she gave. She gave him an apple, he gave her a spiritual insight. Which any skeptical way you look at it is worth more than an apple. Insane.

And I wonder if maybe that's some sort of secret law to the universe that most of us never catch on to because we cling too tightly to what we have and what we want. When you give, you always receive more. Not just in a platitudinal smiley way like it sounds, but as an actual secret scientific law to the universe, a part of the inherent nature of the way it was made. We repeat it because we've heard it from people like our parents or Jesus but we, at least I, probably don't actually really believe it mathematically.

But people who actually do dare to give a lot or everything always testify to it. Amy Carmichael would say so. So would Jim Elliot. And John Wesley agreed.

I've never heard of or read about someone who gave generously, who sacrificed mightily, and regretted it. Maybe they exist and I just don't know them. Maybe their stories don't get famous. But maybe they don't exist? Maybe every single person who has ever tried it knows the secret, but very few of us ever get the guts to try it because we have such a strong instinct to cling, even to tiny things, to accumulate. Saw that in myself in a tiny thing just this morning.

Random thought.

"Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to." Deuteronomy 15:10

"He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses." Proverbs 28:27