Stay away from lazy parasites, who perch on you just to satisfy their needs, they do not come to alleviate your burdens, hence, their mission is to distract, detract and extract, and make you live in abject poverty. Michael Bassey Johnson
What gives? The sun gives light and warmth. A mother gives milk and hugs and nurture. Birdsong brings smiles. The forest offers solace. The moon and the stars above give a sense of awe and perspective below. Friends provide comfort. Children bring joy. Trees bear fruit. Sheep provide wool.
What takes? Light pollution takes away the splendor of the night sky. Thieves seize what is not theirs. Accidents, war, and disease take loved ones. Litter takes away beauty. Thorns take blood. Wolves take life.
We are attracted to what gives. We are suspicious at best or terrified at worst of what takes.
Knowing this natural law of attraction and avoidance, some costume themselves as what gives, but behind the mask is a liar. A thief. A murderer.
Today, we learn how to identify these masked marauders – particularly those who claim to give goodness and truth and guidance when in fact they are only after what they can get out of us.
To take is human. To give, divine.
Let’s open our eyes to the divine to see what gives.
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Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Creation is an act of generosity. Generosity is an act of creation. To create is to gather the resources available to us and shape them into something new and wondrous for others to experience. To be generous is quite literally the same thing.
And yet, how many times do we cheapen and pollute our works of creation by scribbling our name all over it?
Rather than create for the purpose of inducing wonder, we hastily mix a stew of popular and unhealthy ingredients and tempt others with the result. And our only motive is payback through attention or money.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, wisely explains to us that altruism is creative and permeated with light, while selfishness is destructive and lives in darkness. Generosity is a creative force that moves outward from the self. Selfishness is a destructive force that collapses in on itself. And any attempt at mixing the two so that the self – the ego – gets the credit, only destroys that creation.
Is it any wonder that God’s first known words in history are let there be light as he creates all that is, generously giving us all a place to live, and move, and have our being.
Today, we explore DMLK’s definition of generosity as creation in contrast to selfishness as destruction, emphasizing Jesus’ words when he said, It is more blissful to give than to receive.
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Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Oscar Wilde
When consciousness first breaks in the morning and you become aware of being, what is the first word that forms in your mind?
Nearly always, it is I. I need my coffee. I am so tired. I wish I could stay in bed. I have to get moving. I have so much to do today. I want my breakfast.
And then as you rise and move through the day, your I-centered posture continues to dominate your thoughts. Your motives. Your actions.
It’s natural for you to do this, of course. It is the way of the world. What other way is there? Surely to be happy you must think of yourself first. After all, happiness by definition is self-centered. Or is it?
This posture of selfishness, though, keeps us bent on acquiring things. On putting things and people and experiences in orbit around us. And in so doing, of course, those around us become aware of our gravitational pull. And more often than not they resist. They pull away. They are repelled with disgust by your selfishness because it is mutually exclusive to their own.
This resistance frustrates us, and so you increase the gravitational pull. And so do they. And so the dance downward through the darkening spiral goes, until you reach with bitter finality the logical conclusion of continuing to maintain this posture. You become a black hole – something to avoid at all costs because everyone knows that nothing escapes your selfish grasp if they get too close. And then life is only darkness and misery and frustration.
It’s time to put this posture to bed and adapt a new posture altogether, one that births in you a shining star that radiates warmth and light to others. One that brings you the depths of fulfillment you seek while, ironically, comes only when you let go of your selfish pursuit of it.
It’s posture bedtime.
Source Scripture
And You Give Yourself Away: Matthew 8:14-17; Mark 1:29-34; Luke 4:38-41
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