Last
week I had an event in the evening at office and a Bible study to attend. Both
the events were followed by dinner. Nazarene, my wife, asked me, “Where will
you have dinner today?”
While
it took me a while to decide I also pondered over what Nazarene asked, and it
suddenly hit me that question was in itself very profound. I had a choice of
three places to have my dinner, the third being my home. I thought of how blessed we were to be able
to pick and choose where to eat.
I
thought of two more questions on the subject during dinner that evening.
The
second that came to my mind was, “What will you have for dinner today?” Many of
us have ample choice of what can be put on our plates things like choice of ingredients and cuisine as well. There is a lot of food to
eat.
The
third question that floated in my mind was, “Is there dinner today?” In many
homes this is a question that is more of a rule than an exception. People
struggling to put two square meals together, or breadwinners trying very hard to provide for their
families.
Many
years ago one evening Nazarene and I
drove around to give away some leftover
food. We found an elderly lady near a railway gate and gave her the packet. Her spontaneous response on
receiving the packet was “ Thank you
very much sir, God Bless you.” She had
not even seen the cold food yet she was brimming over with gratitude unconditionally.
I
realise that each of these questions come from a different orbit we are in our
lives. We may not have answers as
well however our attitude could be one of Grace, Responsibility or Gratitude.
Thought-provoking reflection. So my attempt at summarising your post is: let us be aware of "grace" (unmerited favour) that blesses us with much, respond with "gratitude" and be moved to take "responsibility" to share with those who are under-privileged. One good indication is when we do our acts of charity in secret ("do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing") not keen to let it be known or to get brownie points from others.
ReplyDeleteAt the corporate level, we have a few examples like UPS who do outstanding CSR work and do not publicise it whilst many other corporates seem to make a huge tamaasha of their CSR work and wallow in self-created media hype. Media hungry self-promotion of CSR work is sad as it devalues the essence of what is going on and could even reduce the recipients to "objects" and statistics more than human beings like us who have their own dignity as much as their needs.