In Giving…

Many years ago, my cousin and his family came to 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, “Katie, what’s the invisible bucket?”

She explained, “We all have them. When you say something nice or do something kind, you’re adding something good to someone else’s bucket—and to your own. But if you say something mean or do something not nice, you take something out of their bucket and your own. So we have to work hard to fill up other people’s buckets!”

I love that. And it’s true—in giving, we receive.

The beloved prayer of St. Francis brings this home beautifully. And so today, that is our 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 is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.