Reflections on the Theme

In September 1999, the world lost a saint. Her gifts, though, keep on giving. During her lifetime, Oseola McCarty gave more than $150,000 to endow student scholarships at the University of Southern Mississippi. However, Ms. McCarty was not a wealthy woman — at least financially. Her cumulative gift represented the savings of many years, carefully put away little by little from her earnings as a maid. "I don’t regret one penny," Ms. McCarty said. "I just wish I had more to give." And in a way she did as many people, inspired by her example, have added to her gift.

Oseola McCarty offered us all a model of God’s great recyclable love. From our awareness of ourselves as God’s beloved children and recipients of so great a grace, we respond with our gifts — not as an obligation, not as an exchange, but as a natural and normal response to God’s graciousness.

"From his fullness . . . " John 1:1-16 is a rich verse to consider, especially alongside the poem on this year’s poster. Scripture repeatedly emphasizes God’s fullness and abundance. But often that is hard for us to grasp. Phil Porter’s poem shows us our all-too-human tendency to clutch our blessings to ourselves. How can we realize that only by channeling our blessings — sharing our gifts — do we avoid bottling up the flow of goodness" How can we learn to trust God’s abundance so completely that we see our cups always running over"

"we have all received. . ." Often it’s hard to accept our status as "receivers," people wholly dependent not on our efforts and possessions, but on God’s freely given blessings. The wonderful mystery of giving and receiving springs from a paradox: As we affirm that everything we have received — "everything" — is a gift from God, we are able, more and more, to let go our need to possess and control. We receive, and thus we give; we give, and thus we receive. God’s truth, invariably, are both simple and complex. And like so much of God’s truth, the act of giving and receiving is essentially one of faith.

Offerings such as Week of Compassion ask us to recycle our blessings: to pass along some of our money so that people who lack the basic provisions of life, receive a little help and hope. But if we think we are merely "giving to the poor," we are wrong. The people who benefit from our gifts are in ways richer than we, because they are learning to rely on the love of God, channeled through the care of fellow human beings. As we open our awareness to such people’s courage and trust, we begin to embrace the great lesson of faith that these supposed "receivers" have to teach: Not only have we all received, as our blessing-filled lives can attest. Even more importantly, from each other — even those seemingly unconnected to our lives, seemingly with little or nothing to give us — we all continue to receive.

"grace upon grace . . . " What does the phrase make you see? Picture it: Grace upon grace. Blessing upon blessing. No longer one red bird released from clutching fingers, but a whole, soaring flock of birds. All it takes is one act of giving, and from there a joyful explosion of grace streams out into the world. That’s how God’s love works, isn’t it?

It’s easy to ask ourselves, "What difference can I — just one person — make in combating world hunger, natural disasters, human cruelty . . . ?" Granted, each of us can make only the difference of one person. But it’s the difference of one person, passed along to more persons, spilling over to many persons, and ultimately blessing us all.

Oseola McCarty knew that secret. The nature of our "God whose giving knows no ending," as the hymn describes, isn’t just about giving, and it’s not just about receiving. It’s about both — inseparable from each other — and about what they inevitably set in motion: grace upon grace upon grace . . .