Several years ago, the film, Paying It Forward, captured our imaginations and became the inspiration for a way of life that continues, as the notion and practice of community service and sharing gifts continues in healthy doses in our communities. These, certainly are not new concepts and go right back even to the Old Testament, as Job, deprived of all his family and possessions, proclaimed. "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, Blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job 1:23) He realized that all came from God for his USE, not as his exclusive and selfish RIGHT.
Maria von Trapp, matriarch of the famous Trapp Family Singers, who inspired the perennial favorite musical and film, The Sound of Music, loved the lines from one of its songs: "A bell is not a bell until you ring it./ Love is not love until you give it away."
Today's Gospel from Matthew 21:33-46 describes a group of workers, who, after having leased land and raised, crops, refused to turn them over to the landowner as he requested. They claimed them as their own, for they had labored hard to raise them, forgetting that it was the gift of the landowner that enabled them to do so. They mistook the gift for their entitled right. We might scoff that them for their myopia, but how often do we hold back when people ask us to share the gifts we have been given? We forget that we were so blessed, not for ourselves, but for others, and that paying forward is the best way to give those gifts lasting value.
Bro. Rene
Maria von Trapp, matriarch of the famous Trapp Family Singers, who inspired the perennial favorite musical and film, The Sound of Music, loved the lines from one of its songs: "A bell is not a bell until you ring it./ Love is not love until you give it away."
Today's Gospel from Matthew 21:33-46 describes a group of workers, who, after having leased land and raised, crops, refused to turn them over to the landowner as he requested. They claimed them as their own, for they had labored hard to raise them, forgetting that it was the gift of the landowner that enabled them to do so. They mistook the gift for their entitled right. We might scoff that them for their myopia, but how often do we hold back when people ask us to share the gifts we have been given? We forget that we were so blessed, not for ourselves, but for others, and that paying forward is the best way to give those gifts lasting value.
Bro. Rene
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