Echoes of Giving

Jesus wasn’t just talking about money when he said, “give and it will be given to you” in Luke 6:38. Most of us know that, of course, but Oswald Chambers, in his Morning and Evening devotional, brought me up short recently when he suggested supplying someone else’s need often draws things out of us we never knew we had .

He likened the process to the proverbial “two men in the snow; one chafed the other’s limbs to keep him from dying, and in so doing kept his own blood in circulation, and saved his own life.”

I found myself strongly relating to the idea because I’ve experienced personal benefit and growth from responding to someone else’s need. I found abilities I didn’t know I had rise from within as I strove to make life better for someone else. I will often stretch myself farther for another person than I will for my own sake. In the process, I discover I’m capable of more than I thought.

The benefit of giving goes beyond expanding our talents, however. It can actually magnify our empathy. Have you ever begun with a simple act of drying someone else’s tears and found your heart welling up to a new level of sympathy for them as you did so? I have.

Chambers writes “that to get, we must give; that to accumulate, we must scatter; that to make ourselves happy, we must make others happy; and that in order to become spiritually vigorous, we must seek the spiritual good of others. In watering others, we are ourselves watered.”

Giving, in other words, seems to create an echo effect. When our hearts respond to a need, we aim our efforts toward helping the other person. The process makes a demand on our abilities and they seem to grow supernaturally in response, driven by a need to accomplish that purpose. Help pulsates out of us like a sonic beam, our compassion expanding as it heads toward the target and our talents growing and multiplying as we call on them. All that energy finally reaches its mark and impacts that person we were aiming for to good effect. The beam doesn’t stop there, though. It bounces right back at us like a sonic echo that just pinged a submarine.

It heightens my appreciation of Luke 6:38. The principal isn’t just to guide our financial generosity, but every area of life in which we’re willing to contribute. “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you” (NKJV).

Have you experienced this? In the very effort of trying to be useful to someone else, have you found powers, abilities, wisdom, strength, sympathies you never knew you had? I’d love to hear some of your stories. In what ways have you helped others and found yourself expanded in the process? If you’re willing, share a brief testimony in the comments below.