Giving- What does it really cost?

So daily I am reminded that we are finite people, with finite resources, and yet we have an infinite imagination of what to do with those people and resources.  We live in a culture and a day in age that wastes more than any other point in history.  What we waste in resources, time, energy and lack of effort in one day, people 100 years ago would have given a lifetime to dream of achieving.






Earliest humans only lived to see about 20-30 years old, if they were lucky.  Even less than 100 years ago, the life time expectation was only around 50 years old.  Now we have people who regularly are make it not only to 100 but beyond by several years.  Maybe its is luck that they make it so far but the average lifetime is now around 80 years old.  We have made huge leaps and bounds in the ways of innovation in medicine, nutrition, and knowledge of how to best take care of ourselves.






With all this extra time and such strides in innovation, how do we use it?  Do we enrich the lives of those around us, up lifting those who have fallen on hard times, or do we squander and waste all that potential in foolish attempts to gain more and more until we have everything, and yet nothing at all? Our goal in life should be like that of Norman Borlaug, who saved our a billion lives, and was hard at work trying to improve others when he found out he won the Nobel Peace Prize.  Instead, some act like Thomas Midgley Jr., who was the single greatest threat to the environment then any other organism in the history of the world.


When we give of our resources, they can be replaced.  When we give of our time, we give something that we can't get back.  When the time has come and gone, it is no more.  So we should use it wisely, better, and for the betterment of others.  Coach a youth team, join a fundraiser, sing carols to those who could use an uplifting song, take a weekend and help build a house, cook a meal for parents who have spent all their energy worrying about a sick child, read a book to children, DO SOMETHING!!


We complain about the world around us, when we can fix it by simply giving. Giving of our time, giving of our resources, being grateful for the blessings we have and bestowing blessings on those without.