Your Own First?

In a previous post (Tumbling Down), I wrote that I'd given away so much that I had put myself in the position of not being able to help myself and my boy. That same night, I decided to read from Proverbs. I read verse after verse of how it's important to give to people in need, which showed me that my thinking earlier in the night had been erroneous to a point.

So now I'm thinking that giving money is like helping people with their work. I'll explain.

At the restaurant (or anywhere I work) I work very hard. I generally get all of my work done plus do a number of tasks that are the jobs of others. I'm like this at any job. My attitude is that if something needs doing, then it should be done and I'm not going to stand around deciding whether or not to do it based on the notion of whose job it is. (Of course if it's something that I'm not qualified to do or for some other reason ought not to do, then it's different). I find that, regardless of the job, things run more smoothly and morale is better if everyone pitches in and does as much as they can.

I've also learned through the years that if I take care of someone else's responsibility before I take care of my own, I'll be left working late because I still have to do my own work and no one is going to help me with that no matter how much I help others. The solution to that is to do my own stuff and then help everyone else regardless of how much others try to pressure me to take care of their stuff before my own. (If I don't take care of my own responsibilities I can't stand around blaming someone else - That's why it's called responsibility and why it's assigned or designated.)

So I think it's similar with money (or services that really translate into money). There's a balance to be found and misplaced guilt or feeling sorry for people has no place in the equation. So not only is it okay to give things away, whether it be money, material or service, it's also good to give it. The part that's a bit tricky is that balance part. I should take care of my own needs and then give.

Does that sound right? I don't recall the Bible saying that anywhere, though. hmmm....

The other consideration is the definition of "need". What I think is need (as differentiated from want) is quite different from what most people I know think of as "need". My version is much less than others in North America. If you asked a kid on the street in Bangladesh about need, he or she would also have a very different answer.

*****

Side note: Remember how I told you about my friend who showed up at my house with all the fruits and vegetables? Well, if you'd asked me, I would have told you I didn't "need" that stuff, that I could live on oatmeal, that I still had meatballs in the fridge that my friend gave me. As it turns out, I was getting sick (just common cold kind of sick) but didn't know it yet. It also turns out that my other friend who had given me all those casseroles had wanted to do another one but was unable (I didn't know any of that, either, but wasn't expecting anything anyway). I know that having those fruits and vegetables shortened the duration and intensity of the cold, that the cold wasn't able to really grab onto me. Interesting how that happened just in time, eh. :)