Blessed To Give/ Hard To Receive

Yes, Ginny gave me her vicious cold.

As she recovers more and more, I get sicker and sicker.

After ten days of living in ghastly misery, she felt well enough to return to work today; I feel so miserable myself that I intend to lay abed and wallow in misery, too sick to read and hardly able to watch vcr reruns of the Monk detective mystery stories.

It’s a good thing that we both have not felt ill at the same time. We’d have been in real trouble if that happened.

On the up side of things, this morning I walked outside and snapped this photo of the swimming pool. Yes, this shows the same pool as the photos Ginny took on Friday (1/18):

Isn't it beautiful!

I feel proud to have accomplished that miracle at a cost of only a few day’s work and about $45, whereas, before I began my amateur innovations, a $3,000 expense loomed before us.

Had I not been able to patch the broken steel wall, we’d have had to remove the pool altogether and then where would I pray on summer nights when I float on an air mattress looking up at the stars?

Anyhow, I’m proud that my improvisations — using diamond wire, duct tape, an old dog blanket and plastic garbage bags — appear to have worked so well to repair this pool. This gift of improvisation is the same I once used to build parade floats from scrap materials and to teach Bible lessons using odd bits of things I found in the trash.

But many skilled workmen do not improvise; they do things right.

Ginny and I talked at length about this Sunday morning over breakfast. A donor who does not want to be named has offered to bring in skilled carpenters to make some crucial home repairs for us. Rotten boards in the eaves to be replaced, door re-hung, lightening fixtures updated, etc.

This donor is investing big bucks taking care of us — and it makes us very uncomfortable.

I spoke on the phone with him, urging him to tone things down a little and let me do some of the things I feel capable of doing, but he said it’s more economical to have professionals do the job quick and right. He has a spending cap for the project and this is the kindness he wants to do us out of the goodness of his heart.

Being on the receiving end of charity pushes us out of our comfort zone.

As Ginny and I looked over our checkbook, we see that our own charitable giving has declined over recent years. That troubles us.

We like to be givers.

It feels good to be a giver.

Speaking to a delegation from Ephesus, St. Paul quotes Jesus as saying, “It is more blessed to give than to receive”. (Oddly enough, this quotation does not come from any of the four Gospels).

Yet, the entire foundation of the Christian faith rests not on giving to God but on receiving from Him.

In the final analysis every person on earth, no matter how materially wealthy, is on the receiving end of God’s charity. What have we that we have not received?

“He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But to as many as received Him, to then gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name”.

Receiving Christ is the first step in the Christian life.

We find that enormously hard to do.

Receiving the gift of God pushes us out of our comfort zone.

It gets worse:

The Scripture says, “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him”.

That’s even harder because I want to be a giver, Big Daddy blessing lesser folks with my bounty.

Spiritually I resemble a toddler whose spent the last 20 minutes trying unsuccessfully to zip up a jacket and still refusing help, slapping away hands, and insisting, “I can do it myself, Mother”!

And here the Lord God, a jealous God, does not put up with my nonsense. He knows just how big I am, how vain, how proud, how pathetic playing King Of The Hill on a dung heap.

But, it is so hard to receive from God or anybody else.

Being on the receiving end of some donor’s charity make me realize how weak I am.

That’s good for me.

Painful, but good for me.

His strength is made perfect in weakness.

So, while Ginny and I appreciate the donor’s charity and the skill of the construction workers who will actually do jobs I can’t do, we are having to learn how to manage and expand our personal comfort levels to be able to receive.

It’s a deep spiritual lesson we don’t really want to learn.