The poet/author Kahlil Gibran is credited with saying, “I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.” Sometimes giving is as simple and relatively painless as writing a check. Sometimes giving involves deeper sacrifice as when you concede your own personal needs in favor of another’s. Regardless, the net result of giving is that whatever your investment is, your return is always greater.
The following story, adapted from a Brothers Grimm tale, vividly illustrates this point. I discovered it in the book The Moral Compass authored by William J. Bennett.
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A little girl once lived all alone with her old grandmother upon the borders of a forest. They were so poor that they were scarcely able to buy food to eat or clothes to cover them.
“Never mind, Granny,” the little girl would say. “Someday I will be big enough to work, and then I will earn so much that I will be able to buy everything that we need, and to give something to other poor folk as well.”
One day the child went off into the forest to gather sticks. These she hoped to sell for a few pennies in the town over beyond the hill. She was to be gone all day, so she took with her into the forest a bit of bread, which was all they had left to eat.
It was winter, and the air was bitterly cold. The child wrapped her little shawl about her, and ran on as fast as she could. She was hungry, but she intended to save her crust until after the sticks were gathered.
Just as she reached the edge of the forest she met a boy, even smaller than she herself, and he was crying bitterly.
The little girl had a tender heart. She stopped and asked the child why he was weeping.
“I am weeping,” he answered, “because I am hungry.”
“Have you had nothing to eat today?” she asked.
“I have had nothing and I am starving, for I do not know where to go for food.”
The little girl sighed. “You are probably hungrier than I am,” she said, and she took the crust from her pocket and gave it to the boy. Then she again hurried on.
A little farther on, she met another child who was even more miserable-looking than the first, for this child seemed almost frozen with cold. Her clothing hung around her in rags, and her skin looked blue through the rents.
“Ah,” she cried, “if I had but a warm little dress like yours! Help me, I pray you, or I shall certainly die of cold.”
The good little girl was filled with pity. “It is not right,” thought she, “that I should have both a dress and a shawl. I will give one of them to this poor child.”
She took off her dress and gave it to the child, and then wrapped the shawl closely about her shoulders. In spite of the shawl she felt very, very cold. Still she was near the place where the sticks were to be found, and as soon as she gathered them she would run home again.
She hastened on, but when she reached the place where the sticks were she saw an old woman already there, gathering up the fallen wood. The old woman was so bent and poor and miserable looking that the little girl’s heart ached for her.
“Oh, oh! groaned the old woman. “How my poor bones do ache. If I had but a shawl to wrap about my shoulders I would not suffer so.”
The child thought of her own grandmother, and how she sometimes suffered, and she had pity on the old woman.
“Here,” she said, “take my shawl,” and slipping it from her shoulders, she gave it to the old woman.
And now she stood there in the forest with her arms and shoulders bare, and with nothing on her but her little shift. The sharp wind blew about her, but she was not cold. She had eaten nothing, but she was not hungry. She was fed and warmed by her own kindness.
She gathered her sticks and started home again. It was growing dark and the stars shown through the bare branches of the trees. Suddenly an old man stood beside her. “Give me your sticks,” said he, “for my hearth is cold, and I am too old to gather wood for myself.”
The little girl sighed. If she gave him the sticks she would have to stop and gather more. Still she would not refuse him. “Take them,” she said, “in heaven’s name.”
No sooner had she said this than she saw it was not an old man who stood before her, but a shining angel.
“You have fed the hungry,” said the angel, “you have clothed the naked, and you have given help to those who asked for it. You shall not go unrewarded. See!”
At once a light shone around the child, and it seemed to her that all the stars of heaven were falling through the bare branches of the trees, but these stars were diamonds and rubies and other precious stones. They lay thick upon the ground. “Gather them together,” said the angel, “for they are yours.”
Wondering, the child gathered them together – all that she could carry in the skirt of her little shift.
When she looked about her again the angel was gone, but the child hastened home with her treasure. It was enough to make her and her grandmother rich. From then on they lacked for nothing. They were not only able to have all they wished for, but to give to many who were poor. So they were not only rich, but beloved by all who knew them.
Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full–pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.” – Luke 6:38
Have an AWE-full weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacqué