From The Storyteller
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Hello All: If you're looking for something to help you smile, this story is definitely for you. Enjoy. Doug
Gift “I just bought a new computer, and I would like to donate my old one to the church”, this and similar offers spoken to me often. I feel the purposes of a gift is to enhance the one receiving it, and I believe filling a church with well used “stuff” doesn’t meet that purpose. Consequently my “go to” response for these offers has been to smile, thank them, and suggest the Habitat for Humanity resale shop, as a better place for their donation. Which naturally caused me to wonder what it means to be generous. I grew up with the idea that generosity always involved money, because a generous person is the one who gives more money than expected. Over the years however, my understanding of being generous became less about money and more about time. Ultimately, I concluded that the most generous gift we can offer to others is our time. When I came to this conclusion, I began to find people being generous gift-givers virtually everywhere. The easy ones to spot would include those who were giving of their time by volunteering at places like a food pantry or hospital. The generous gift of their time does make a difference. What really lifted my spirit and caused me to smile, was when I started uncovering those remarkable places where those generous gifts go unnoticed. Two of those remarkable, unnoticed places where generosity happens is the greeting card section of the grocery store and the children’s section in a toy store at Christmas. It is amazing how long people will hunt for that perfect toy or stand reading card after card, in order to find just the right birthday message. Moral: If we take time to look, we will find generous people everywhere. |