In Giving…

Many years ago now my cousin and his family came for a visit. His daughter Katie was about four at the time, and very sweet. When they arrived, she gave me a hug and said, “I’m filling up your invisible bucket!” So I asked her, “Katie, what is the invisible bucket?” “I learned in school that we all have them,” She explained. “Whenever you say something nice or do something kind for someone else you are adding something good to their bucket, and you are adding something good to your own invisible bucket.” She held up an imaginary bucket for me to see, and then she continued. “But, if you say something mean, or do something not nice to someone else, then you really are taking something out of their bucket and a lot out of your own bucket. So, we have to work hard to fill up other people’s buckets!”

I love that! And it is true that it is in giving that we receive.

The beloved prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi really brings this home for me. Will you join me in this prayer:

Let us pray:

Lord make Me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness joy.

O Divine Master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand, to be loved. as to love.

For it’s in giving that we receive. And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it’s in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.