Giving More and More

Recently I was privileged to meet an interesting individual.  She was a girl in 8th grade that had lived in orphanages for the past 8 years in her life.  In 2 weeks time, she will have a healthy family for the first time in her life when a couple from the United States will come to adopt her.

The joy that she had, knowing that this couple, which she had spent time with previously, was coming to rescue her from orphanage life was quite apparent.  She told me of how she has prayed her whole life that she could someday have a family, who loved her and she could love.

One short anecdote she shared with me, from her time with her parents-to-be, is how one evening when they were together at the dinner table, they had laid out a bunch of candy which she could take.  And she told me, with a big grin, that she took it all and shoved it into her pockets as quickly as possible.  But when she looked back up to the table after her fury of collecting, the table was again full of candy.

Sometimes we underestimate the love of our parents, and in the same way, the love of our Father in heaven.  Despite our failures, our past, our self-serving nature from the time we enter this world until the time we pass from it, and our constant rejection towards them, this love is never ending and persistent.  And why do we receive this love from our parents and God?  Simply because we are their creation.

For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God. - Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Often because of the imperfect relationships, which we experience between family, friends, the church, and our resistance to God, we never fully experience this grace, and it becomes near impossible for us to believe that it is possible to receive such an endless gift.  Even "good Christians" will reject this gift, or attempt to become an arbiter of these blessings for those whom they deem worthy or unworthy.

Nobody can earn this gift, for to so would be to contradict what grace is in it's essence.  And so because of this, we need to give grace to others in our finite human way whenever and wherever we are able.

We live in a world that seeks justice for every action, minute or massive, and it doesn't seem to be working out very well.

My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours. - Bishop Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness

We need to have an investment in the lives of the "graceless" among us.  Those who are completely without hope, and will never find it if we don't share that with them.  Whether it is through spiritual, physical, emotional, or other types of support, we need to have a burden for these people.  Not only because it is for their good, but because it helps us to realize the grace that we have been given.