Generosity
On Thursday morning I read a blog about generosity. My friend, the writer, asked how we blog readers had recently been the recipients of generosity? I was blown away to think how blessed I am to be on the receiving side of generosity in so many ways.
Generousness seems often to be associated with money so my first thought on being the recipient of generousness was financially. My parents and my husband's parents are incredibly generous with us financially. My son requires some ongoing medical attention that is quite expensive and would be a very heavy burden if we had to bear it on our own, but thankfully our parents have jumped in and generously shared of their financial resources so that our son can get the help he needs. I know they would love our family just as much even if they were not able to express it in this financial way, but it is a blessing to be able to receive such a tangible expression of love for our family
The next obvious expression of generousness to come to mind is God's love, grace and forgiveness. I know perhaps this should have been the first thought but it wasn't :-) It is truly amazing to think of how generously God loves us - to think that while we were dead in our sins, not even aware of our need for a savior, Jesus willfully gave up his human life for us. Because of this great love we are able to receive lavish amounts of grace, and unfathomable (70X7) forgiveness.
In considering the avenues through which I have been the recipient of generousness I also thought of my employers. My last several bosses have blessed me with a generous amount of freedom to accommodate my schedule as a working mom. They have been great at protecting me from taking on too much so that I can do my work with excellence with a reasonable amount of time being spent on work.
As the day went on, more examples of how I have been blessed by others generosity came to mind. I have some friends who generously share encouragement with me and if you have had friends like that you know how valuable that can be. I have friends and family who have shared of their time generously and I greatly appreciate that. I think of Keith Drury, Ron Blue, parents and others who generously share their knowledge and experience with a lot of young people and fellow seekers. It takes time and commitment to put your experience together in such a way so as to be able to share it in a valuable way, and because they do this many of us are able to benefit from it.
As I end the day, I am filled with an overflowing gratefulness for the ways people choose to be generous with me. I am also encouraged that I too can be generous. I am not in a position to be able to give out money as generously or extravagantly as I would like to, but I realize that there are many ways I can bless people with generosity. I can be generous with the money or possesions I do have, but I can also be generous with my time and listen deeply, I can be generous with my love the way God is so generous with me, and I can be generous with my encouragement and be the type of person people look forward to seeing. Opportunities abound - now if only I can have the eyes to recognize them, the desire to utilize them and God's love to fuel it.
posted by tricia @ 11:34 PM
3 Comments:
Is your reference to me as "my friend, the writer" like "my friend, the Poet" in Blue Like Jazz who is not really a poet? ;)
Great thoughts, Tricia...it makes me think about this topic even more. I would love to have people look back on my life someday and remember me as a generous person - with my time, treasure, and talents.
Hey Tricia! I stop by your site every now and then and enjoy reading your thoughts. I am just curious, what motivated you to start your food and nutrition research, and what are a few basic principles you have learned?
Hi Deb :-)
When Jacob started going to daycare he got sick a lot and then I got sick a lot. It was horrible - I was literally sick almost 6 months straight. I started to think about what I was eating and realized Dr. Pepper and nachos probably was not my best choice so I started reading all sorts of stuff. I read far out/hard core stuff (vegan stuff, enzyme stuff, raw food only stuff), all the diet books (south beach, Abs Diet, sugar busters, etc)and basically I pulled out the principles that everyone seemed to agree on - we need fresh fruits and vegetables in our diets, we need a sense of what a normal portion is, processed food is nasty, eat smaller meals several times a day, etc. On the other hand I started learning about how incredibly preventitive nutrition can be and I have seen and heard some amazing stories of how good nutrition has positively effected health, behavior, immunity, weight and so much more. So that is the beginning of my journey. It fascinates me, even though I still have a long way to go :-)If you are interested you can check out my Juice Plus website which has some interesting studies on nutrition. It is:
http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=tg06165
I hope you and family are doing well! It was really nice to see you earlier this summer.
tricia
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