Today I want to suggest an exciting idea - I want you to try giving yourself away. 

I once knew a man who suffered a nervous breakdown, during which he sat for months in gloom and mental darkness. One day I suggested he try to turn off his dark, depressing thoughts by practicing thanksgiving. I said, "Start thinking of people who greatly helped you in your life."

So, he wrote an elderly school teacher, a Miss Elaine Smith, who had been a positive influence on his life. A reply came, written in the shaky handwriting of an aged lady. "Dear Willy," she wrote, "When I read your letter I was blinded by tears, for I remember you as a boy, and as I think of you now I see you as a little fellow in my class. You have warmed my old heart. I taught school for fifty years. Yours is the first letter of thanks I ever received from a student, and I shall cherish it until I die." 

Friend of Dial Hope, writing a letter of thanks - a project like that - may involve taking a little time - but it's an opportunity to give a little of yourself, and really that's the best you can give. Strangely, when you give yourself, you find yourself. 

Let us pray: God of hope, we come to you when our hope is vanquished, and our faith is small. We come to you when the promise of the "good life" has been found lacking when clothes and cuisine, cars, and cappuccinos become insufficient nourishment for the hunger of the human spirit. We come to you because we have nowhere else to go. O God, save us from ourselves; from self-indulgence, and self-idolization. Heal us from the sickness of the body but even more from the sickness of the soul. May we get caught up in the current of your compassion, the flood of your forgiveness and so lose ourselves in the wide ocean of your love. In the name of the risen Christ. Amen. 

The Apostle Paul once wrote, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little. I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty, and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

When I was in Seminary, I served a small church as a student pastor. Part of my responsibility was leading the youth group. The students loved this passage, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” 

This was their verse, and it was meaningful for them. But sometimes they misused it. They would say things like, “We can win that volleyball game, or I will pass that test because Christ will strengthen me!”

What Paul was saying is actually more along the lines of this: Whatever you happen to be dealing with right now, even if you feel like you are hanging on by the last thread of hope, Christ is with you. Whether you win or lose that volleyball game, whether you pass or fail that test, whether you are the most popular kid in school or feel like the biggest loser, whether or not you get that job, or mend that relationship, you have entrusted your life to Christ, and he will give you the strength to get through it. 

To affirm the promise, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” is to place our lives—wins and losses alike—into Christ’s care, trusting that his presence will be enough, whatever today may hold.

Let us pray: God of Grace, today, even now, we entrust our lives again to you. We turn over to you our worry, our concern, our anxiety, our burdens. Meet us at the deepest point of our need. Fill us with your Spirit, and grant us your courage and strength. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Several years ago, Ann Moore, who serves on the Dial Hope board of directors, shared a great story about the famous artist Henri Matisse. In his later years, Matisse became very ill and required the care of a regular nurse. He was assigned a young student nurse named Monique Bourgeois. Monique was fun-loving, joyful, and gregarious. And over time, she and the artist developed a friendship. Monique was also a person of deep faith, while Matisse himself was not. But through their friendship, his own spirituality began to deepen.

Eventually, Monique became part of an order of Dominican nuns. She shared with Matisse that her community wished to build a chapel, and she asked for his help. Matisse responded by giving everything he had. 

He later wrote:  “I began with the profane and now, in the evening of my days, I am ending quite naturally with the divine. This work took four years of intensive labor to the exclusion of all else, and it is the culmination of my whole working life. In spite of its imperfections, I regard it as my masterpiece.”

And a beautiful masterpiece it is! I can only imagine how many lives have been nourished and inspired over the last 60-plus years as they visited this chapel.

Matisse’s life was touched by a single person. In turn, he paid it forward. He put everything he had into a final masterpiece. That masterpiece in turn has touched the hearts and souls of many, many lives… 

My friend Roger Kunkel would call this the “Ripple Effect of Generosity.”

I wonder how you, in your own life, have been touched by others. And I wonder, how you, in turn, are passing that on.

Let us pray: I thank you, O God, for those people who have made a difference in our lives. As we have been blessed, help us in turn to find ways to be a blessing to others. Amen.  

Albert Schweitzer was a remarkably gifted author, thinker, musician, and theologian. He could have excelled in any one of those areas. In fact, before he was 30, he was a respected writer on theology, an accomplished organist, and an authority on the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach. Instead, he chose to work in an African mission hospital as a doctor. He went to medical school for that purpose alone. For his many years of humanitarian efforts, Schweitzer was awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. He used his $33,000 Nobel Prize to expand the hospital and to build a leper colony.

Speaking to a graduating class of college students, Schweitzer once said, “I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”

I believe it. Here is someone of deep thought, tremendous intelligence, and integrity who practiced what he preached. I have also seen this played out over many years of ministry. Those who find a way to serve and give are by far the people most at peace.

Talking to his disciples, Jesus once said, “The greatest among you will be your servant” (Matthew 23:11-12)

Schweitzer offered one further piece of advice: “Do something for somebody every day for which you do not get paid.”

Beautiful!

Let us pray: Gracious God, you give, and you give, and you give. Your blessings rain down around us on every side. Thank you for creating us in your image. Thank you for the peace and joy that come with generous living. And thank you for people who inspire us to be the kind of people you created us to be. Today, we especially pray for those who give sacrificially to us. We lift up teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers, women and men in the military and their families back home - and others who serve us regularly. Bless them, protect them, and give them your grace. Amen.

The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17–19:

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

In his book My Bright Abyss, poet and theologian Christian Wiman wrote something that struck me as profound: “Being saved involves embracing rather than denouncing one’s past. It is true that Christ makes a man anew, that there is some ultimate change in him. But part of that change is the ability to see your life as a whole, to feel the form and unity of it, to become a creature made for and assimilated into existence, rather than a desperate, fragmented man…”

There are definitely aspects of my past I would rather forget, even whole chapters I’d just as soon leave behind. And yet, I know the mistakes and failures of the past, the suffering and struggles I’ve faced, have developed in me a deeper sense of compassion, forgiveness, and grace.

Salvation is often described as leaving the old life behind, as though faith were a clean break from everything that came before. But Paul speaks of something more spacious and more honest. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation,” he writes—not a new person with no past, but a life made whole and new through reconciliation.

He goes on to tell us that in Christ, God was “reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” In other words, reconciliation does not erase history. It restores relationship.

What if being saved is not standing over our past in judgment, but learning to stand within our lives in grace? What if new creation does not mean becoming someone with no history, but becoming someone who can finally see their life as a whole—its wounds and wisdom, its losses and growth—held together in Christ?

And if God is not counting our trespasses against us, how might that change the way we see ourselves—or the way we extend grace to others—as people learning, slowly and imperfectly, to belong?

Let us pray: Reconciling God, we thank you that in Christ you accept us as we are, and that you gather even our past into your grace. Where we carry regret, grant forgiveness; where we bear scars, awaken compassion. Teach us to stand within our lives with trust, and to live as people reconciled to you and to one another. Through Jesus Christ, our peace. Amen.