"The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor."
-Proverbs 22:9
If you've read this blog in the past or you know me personally, you know that I started working full-time a couple months ago. The week before Christmas break, I was talking with one of my team members, who is married and has a daughter. Since it was nearly Christmas, we talked about our Christmas traditions. I explained to him that I always have a gift exchange and dinner with my family for Christmas. He told me that he just has a small gift exchange with his immediate family and maybe dinner with some friends.
We continued our conversation, which now turned to the working life. I mentioned how tiring and stressful work often is, to which he agreed. He then said this: "whenever I see my daughter's face when she opens a gift, I feel that work isn't so bad". I thought what he said made sense, but I didn't think much about what he said since I can't really relate to his experience.
In the following weeks, I visited my hometown to celebrate Christmas with my family. In our gift exchange, we are each assigned a person to give gifts to. I was responsible to give gifts to one of my uncles. I was able to buy everything on his list because he didn't ask for very much. I had been working full time for a while at that point and had some extra cash, so I decided to purchase some gifts for his little daughter as well.
We went around opening gifts as we always do, when it became my baby cousin's turn to open her gift. Before she opened the gift, a chorus of adults asked her who gave her the gift. She was just a toddler at that point, so she asked the nearest adult to read the gift's label. One of my aunt's read it out loud- "from: Batman". I put that as a reference to my favorite superhero, knowing that everyone (except my little cousins) would understand that the gift was from me. Another one of my young cousins exclaimed "Batman is in this world?!?", which was really funny to hear from him. My cousin opened her gift, which was a puzzle I think, and immediately started shouting with joy. She ran over to me to give me a hug, which is when I thought back to what my team member said at work.
Before I started working full time, I imagined that the best part of being a working adult is that I would be able to enjoy making and spending money. However, I've been realizing that the best part of having money is being able to give it away. The Gaither Vocal Band has a song titled "Give it Away" that describes this very principle. Part of the lyrics say "if you want more happy than your heart could hold, if you wanna stand taller, if the truth were told, take whatever you have and give it away."
One of my favorite things to do is to visit my hometown and spend time with people. I enjoy it even more now because I have the ability to buy meals for my friends and family. There's something in me that finds such satisfaction and joy when I give things to others, even if it's something as small as a puzzle. The expression "it's better to give than receive" is absolutely true. The Bible reinforces this idea as well. It gives warnings to people who hold onto their possessions, because everything we have on this earth will fall away. Hold onto Jesus, and be willing to give everything else away.
-Smart
