Giving-What's it All About?

GIVING – What’s all About?

Can you give what you do not have?  When times are hard, we may not have much to give if giving is about things. It is said that to give is love in action, especially when no return is possible. To give is to demonstrate love. Love grows in us by sharing with others. We will receive more when we give it away. A small child picks a golden dandelion and presents it as a gift of love. If it is received as a mere weed and tossed aside, love has been rejected and is diminished in the child.

God created a universe of splendor for our pleasure and our use. Every mountain and valley, river and stream, lakes and oceans, all things great and small! Look at the diversity of nature; some is just to please the eye and others for our nourishment. No need of mankind has not been met by God in his creation. It is all a gift. This is an extravagant act of love. God provides for ALL our needs and much also for our pleasure. What lover has ever matched such generosity! No gift from any man can match God’s beneficence.

With all of this. God was still not satisfied with what He gave. NO, He desired to demonstrate his expansive love by giving us Himself in his incarnation. Can you hear him saying to you personally, I will walk the walk with you, because I love you. Who do you know in all of human history who stepped outside of himself to walk with inferior beings? Jesus had his divinity but walked among us in human flesh, putting aside his divinity for our sake. He ate, drank, labored and suffered and celebrated in every way that humans do. He gave up his identity as God to become one of us, like us in all things except sin. He did not desire to be feared or to lord it over us. No, he lived in poverty among thr poor in a town that was scorned for its nothingness. Now that’s giving! That’s love!

So much giving is an overflow of love, as if the dam of heaven’s reservoir of love was poured out through Jesus to prove to us that no matter what we have ever done, God still loves us and no one can ever take that away. Our most heinous sins will grieve his heart but erase his love!

Stand before hovel of a manger and small the hay, the animal sweat, the dung. Feel the cold drafty night air blowing threw cracks. Hear the bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle. Observe the dirty, weary shepherds carrying a ewe, the gift of poor men. They are us.

This is not the palace of a King of Kings nor of an omnipotent God. This is a shelter for the poor beasts where God reveals himself to us in all his simplicity and poverty. Joseph, as a mere man is not too pleased with what he has been able to provide for his holy spouse and her divine son. This was not how he pictured the birth of the Son of God who is under his protection. He must have been deeply humbled and disappointed about the outcome of his search for suitable shelter. But it is God’s plan and Joseph humbly bows to the will of God, likely with little understanding of why God would want it so. He fetches water, feeds the livestock, builds a fire and creates a make-shift cradle from a feeding trough. He had probably built a lovely cradle for the child, but it was back in Nazareth!

His poor young wife had no women to attend her nor the baby clothes she had carefully sewn were not in her travel bag. Those too were back in Nazareth. Their travel plans did not seem to coincide with God’s birthing plans. Most of us can relate to these circumstances in some way or other. These were ordinary but holy parents struggling to understand God’s plan which certainly didn’t match theirs.

What is giving? Love in action! When someone insists that they love you and lavish you with things but not their attention or self-sacrifice, then the words are empty. Having no time for the spouse or time with the children shows a lack of love. Having no time for personal prayer or Mass is also a lack of love. Are we truly sending a message of love if giving of our time and talent is absent?

When you gaze upon Mary and Joseph in the familiar manger, consider what they have given and given up for this child and the future of the world. It’s not just a sweet tableau, it’s an image of sacrificial love on the part of each person. What will your Christmas pictures reveal?