James and The Prophet on Giving

I guess the question haunting me is, "Am I a giver?"  I think the answer is actually what is haunting me for it would have to be "no."  Most of my life has been spent taking and protecting and hoarding.  The life of hoarding is a life of fear.  Now those who know me, probably would find that laughable because I don't have a lot.  But what little I have I guard.  Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet has a chapter on "Giving" in which he asks us the very poignant question, "Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?"

What?  Did I get that?  Thirst can be helped.  It is the fear of thirst that is unquenchable.  That stays with me whether I am satisfied or not.  James 4:3 says "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions."  In 1:9 and 10, "Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away."

Fear.  Self-protection.  It is anxiety over not having enough.  And it's not just money.  We are afraid we won't have enough comfort, enough fun, enough time, enough love, enough friends...Enough already!  The problem with the getting and keeping mindset is that we are tuned wrong.  God has created the universe as a giving universe.  It is burning out slowly.  Physicists tell us there is a finite amount of energy and that energy is being degraded.  Every time a star gives light and heat it is losing energy, giving it freely to the rest of the universe.

The plants eat up that energy and convert it to usable packets for the rest of us in the form of food.  Birds fly.  Fish swim.  We talk, eat, and love.  All converting energy.  The trees and flowers grow and bloom to give us freely from what they have been created to give.  Again Gibran, "They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish."  Even the Beatles, off on so many things, grasped the truth that life is equal to the love we make not the love we take.

So, give my friends.  Give freely and often.  Give of yourself, not of your money, and your money will follow.  We were created to give.  All of this was given to us and we join God in his giving nature by just being like Him.  The poor are blessed because they have less to cling to.  It is those of us with more in our hands that are separated from the Kingdom.

But the givers, whether rich or poor, are less impeded with what they have so they can experience all around them that is freely and already given to them.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  More money equals more problems because it is more to lose, but more giving equals more life because it is more to gain.