Thanks for being able to give

I felt utterly exhausted and was hoping to nap before continuing with my second nonprofit event of the day, but I couldn’t get my thoughts to quiet down. “Has anyone really appreciated all the labor and out-of-pocket expense this is costing me? Is there a simpler way to do things? Have I taken on more than I can bear?”

Then cutting across this barrage of negativity came the strong message, “Gratitude and love should abide in every heart each day of all the years” (“Manual of The Mother Church,” p. 60). I recognized this as part of a By-Law from the slim volume of guidance Mary Baker Eddy gave her church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, to help its members stay in the letter and the spirit of love for God and their fellow man. While I am well familiar with this By-Law, this time it came with new force, as if saying “every moment of every day of all the years.”

It struck me that stricter obedience to this divinely inspired idea would help lift me out of this malaise, as I’ve experienced in the past. So, I began to be grateful that I could give, realizing what a privilege it is to serve others, how precious each one we work with is, and how the perfect support for our worthy undertakings comes forth from God. Within 15 minutes I got up feeling refreshed, energized, and able to answer a call for help that had just come in.

Christ Jesus identified the unfailing benefit of generosity when he bid his followers, “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again” (Luke 6:38). Giving that flows freely in response to God’s guidance does not and cannot deplete us. Gratitude helps us recognize this. We stop measuring the transaction – how much it has cost us in time, effort, or money – and trust that God’s law of mutual blessing applies to every act of generosity.

Mary Baker Eddy, who established this news organization, elucidates this law of blessing in her primary work, the textbook of Christian Science, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “In the scientific relation of God to man, we find that whatever blesses one blesses all, as Jesus showed with the loaves and the fishes, – Spirit, not matter, being the source of supply” (p. 206).

She is referencing a powerful demonstration of this law, in which Christ Jesus fed over 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish (see Matthew 14:15-21). He understood that every bit of the good that we see evidenced in our day-to-day lives is but a hint or a symbol of the one wholeness of good that is the very nature of the one infinite God.

Instead of disparaging the small amount of good the bread and fish represented, he gave thanks to God for this evidence, and his disciples gave it out to the multitude of people that had followed him into the desert. Everyone was fed, and there were even 12 baskets of leftovers gathered up.

This may seem miraculous to the human mind, which bases its sense of reality on a finite, material, particle theory of the universe. But Christian Science presents an infinite, unfolding, spiritually mental premise of existence.

Just as there’s an uncountable amount of numbers, limitlessly available for daily usage, the ideas of infinite Mind cannot run out or be used up. In fact, as these ideas are embraced, applied, and shared, they are magnified and more abundantly manifested practically.

Much the way the sun shining on a river of ice frees it from its solid state and allows it to flow, God’s spiritual ideas, poured into consciousness, free up resources for us to use and share. It doesn’t matter whether the need is for food, strength, financial support, time, comfort, or healing inspiration.

This year, as Thanksgiving approaches and I’m taking stock of what I’m grateful for, I’m shouting a “hallelujah!” for being able to give, knowing that “whatever blesses one blesses all,” including me.

We are all in a position to fearlessly give of ourselves in small and large ways, and just think of the infinite resources of strength and abundance that God makes available to us. And just think of the spiritual “Thanksgiving leftovers” we can all gather up together!