Givers and Takers

Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing. 1Th5.11 NKJV

We meet Christ in other people. He comes to us to enlighten, encourage and enable. Christ meets with others in us when we come along side them to do the same. Each day I receive email messages from family and friends. It is a pleasant sensation to hear the familiar ding, announcing that you have mail. To know that others are thinking about you is a great encouragements. Everyday, I get jokes, prayer request, pictures, and messages, some needing comfort, some offering it.
The “Our” in “Our Father who art in heaven,” makes it abundantly clear that God considers us a community. Everyday each person is either giving or taking from that community. Givers or takers. I am not saying that when we need comfort we are takers. No, when I come to someone for comfort and they give it, my need gives meaning to their encouragement. A taker is one who sucks on the world like a leech, a mosquito or a tick. There are givers and there are takers and then there are people in transition between the two, sometimes giving sometimes taking all in the same day. Christ who lives in us would, not leave us a taker but transform us into perpetual givers. Pray the prayer of one who would be a giver:
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen. St. Francis of Assisi
6/5/07 ts