Are You Scared to Receive?

Are you scared to receive? To receive might just undo a carefully constructed sense of being in control, but little drops of love open the rustiest of doors.

I know someone who is very generous to me. In fact, this website and my ability to get content out is only possible due to their technical wisdom and support.

He has a very generous lifestyle.

But what is it like to receive when you know you know that you can’t respond in like fashion?

We live in a very transactional world.

You do this for me and so I must do that for you
You work so many hours and so here is the financial compensation for the giving of that energy.
You do the crime; you do the time
You made your bed now you have to sleep on it
It’s justice and retribution, not mercy and grace
Black and White
In or out

We like it that way because we like straight lines. Fairness, balance, correctness, energy out, energy in.

And then someone says ‘I love you’ and you have no words to respond.

Maybe a quick ‘I love you too’ might suffice, but they got in first.

Their words touch the heart in ways that stop your life dance long enough to see a hole that needs filling with something beyond anything you can create yourself.

You notice the heart has received a gift, and it doesn’t know what to do with it.

Could God be that good? Could love sneak up like that and expose a deep place? Can I receive something that I didn’t earn?

I have to earn it

Jesus once told this parable about how God’s love economy works.

A vineyard owner has work to be done on his vineyard. So at the start of the day he goes to the place where you can hire day workers. He finds some and agrees with them to pay them a day’s wages for a day’s work.

At 9 am he goes back to the village and sees some workers still there but they haven’t been picked to do some work, so he asks them to come and work for them for a ‘fair wage’.

He does this again at noon, 3pm and 5pm.

Understand that if you’re still unemployed by 5pm, there must be something physically wrong with you so much so that you would not have been picked earlier. The strong, fit, and most capable always get picked first.

At the end of the day, he gathers all the workers together and pays them. He begins with those he hired at the end of the day and he pays them a full day’s pay. They didn’t work hardly at all, but still they go away with enough to meet their needs.

You will have to read the story to find out the reaction of those who worked the whole day. (It wasn’t pleasant, and this was before the days of Trade Unions)

But I would like you to imagine yourself as being that person who wasn’t picked but still received.

What emotions get stirred up? Where do your thoughts go to?

Generosity and overwhelm. They received a gift which they did practically nothing to earn other than to show up.

You can’t earn what you most need. It’s a gift. What’s it like to receive?

What happens in your heart, that place of emotions, when you are surprised by overwhelming generosity?

I hope it stops you in your tracks. I hope it brings you to silence and wonder. Humbleness.

Thankfulness

Thankfulness is the art of sitting quietly and noticing.

Our attention can so quickly go to the needs we want met. The places of loss and pain. Our heart can become consumed with the comparisonitis of others who seemingly don’t have it so bad.

So we demand and whine. We control and manipulate.

But it takes a special receptivity to be open to receive what we have done nothing for.

It would be humbling that someone would think of you and decide to give you a surprise birthday party.

Tony Campolo tells the story of his throwing a birthday party for Agnes, a prostitute.

Open to receive

I think it’s easier to give. You’re in control.

But you can’t give out of an empty cup. That cup needs to be open to receiving. Of taking in the good.

You give and give and give, and with a few gentle words, someone comes and opens your lid and pours a little love in.

It brings you to tears. It humbles you that with a few words, your life can become undone.

Abuses are remembered. The echoes of being overlooked and shunned still brain bounce.

You are brought to a hollow vacuumous place. Empty, void, and still.

Their words or deeds, in a mysterious way, become God reaching out to give to you what you most need.

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ. ― Pascal

Incarnational living

Living an incarnational life is what I think Jesus meant when he said these words.

I needed clothes and you clothed me,
I was sick and you looked after me,
I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Matthew 25:36

St. Teresa of Ávila would put it this way

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which He looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are His body.

Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

— St. Teresa of Ávila (attributed)

When you feel a prompt to give a kind word, a surprise birthday party, a little gift, a sense of presence, then please do. You might be giving a gift to someone who is scared to receive and take in.

Questions?
Comments?
Email me 🙂📨
barry@turningthepage.co.nz

Give a little gift to keep the pages turning

Quotes to consider

God is relentlessly tender and compassionate toward us just as we are—not in spite of our sins and faults (that would not be total acceptance), but with them. Brennan Manning
The Incarnational Tradition concerns itself with the relationship between spirit and matter. In short, God is manifest to us through material means. Richard Foster
My experience was that the less I spent on myself and the more I gave to others, the fuller of happiness and blessing did my soul become. Hudson Taylor
Until we can receive with an open heart, we’re never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
And there’s also ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity. C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
When you graciously receive, you give others the gift of giving. Ray A. Davis

Questions to answer

Think of a time when you received something quite unexpected. What was your first response?
Are you scared of receiving whole heartedly?
Is it easier for you to give? If so, why?

Formation exercise

Be open to the idea of someone giving something to you. It might be something quite small, but take note of it and see it as a gift for a need in you.