Posts Tagged: giving

“What We Have, What We Have Been Given, and What We Give”

On June 21, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

A 12-step friend quoted a reading from a recovery book that furthered my quest for sanity and wholeness:

“In OA, we measure our wealth not by what we have but by what we have given.

Teach me to give.”

This set me to ruminating, and this post is the fruit of my rumination. I think that one way to look at this is to say that there are three very different approaches to life. People fall into one of these three camps, based on their dominant values.

First, there are the “I-havers”. These folks base their lives on the idea that if they have certain things, their life is good. In a sense, it doesn’t even matter whether they have something or not. They are basing their sense of well-being on what they have—or would like to have. Years ago, I heard a slogan that might encapsulate this philosophy. “The winner is the one who dies with the most toys.” I fear that this group is the largest group. In fact, we probably all fall into it in one way or another, to one degree or another.

The second group might be called the “I-have-been-given-ers”. They are grateful and aware that they did not get whatever they have all by themselves. Even when they are going through tough times, they try to be thankful for the good times. Their philosophy is expressed in the Bible verse that says, “Give thanks in everything” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

The final group might be labeled the “I-have-to-givers”. I realized only after I thought of this phrase that you can read this label in two different ways. On the one hand, these folks have an inner compulsion to give to others. My wife is like that. She is a servant who never thinks she has done enough.

On the other hand (or also?), the “I-have-to-givers” realize that they have things in order to give. No doubt this helps to fuel their holy compulsion to give. These folks don’t have things in order to heap things up. They have things in order to give things out. Their approach to life might be summed up with the lapidary statement “You only really possess what you give away.”

Now the truth is that we all fall into one of these three groups at times. But the question is this: What is my dominant way of doing life? Perhaps an even better question is this: How will I do life today?

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