Whenever I hear the phrase: it is better to give than to receive, I can’t help but ask the question, which came first the chicken or the egg?
There are several Bible verses espousing that it is better to give than to receive, including:
“Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put in your lap. For with the measure you use it, will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38)
“In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)
It really is so much easier to give than to receive. We do, do , do. We give, give, give. And we are taught, the more we give, the more we’ll receive.
But all this going and doing is exhausting. Maybe it’s harder to receive because we haven’t been taught to receive.
Receiving is definitely not taking.
Receive: To have something bestowed, to take into one’s possession, to hold, bear, contain
Frankly, these definitions, don’t do this powerful word justice.
A gem of a book, The Power of Receiving (2009) by Amanda Owen changed my perspective about giving and receiving and the importance of valuing receiving as much as giving as the only way to restore balance in our crazy, hectic lives.
“While the Giver archetype is celebrated in our culture, the Receiver is almost wholly unknown. The result? Busyness is a virtue.” ~Amanda Owen
But back to age old question about the chicken and the egg. This ancient dilemma dates back to Aristotle (384-322 bc) who actually avoided answering the question. In Genesis 1:21, the chicken came first. “So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”
In both Buddhism and Hinduism, neither came first, “hold that there is a wheel of time, meaning that there is no first in eternity. Time is cyclical. There is no creation.”
And then Stephen Hawking argued the egg came first, and evolutionary evidence say it’s the egg, and DNA says the chicken came before the chicken egg as the chicken came from a mutated proto-chicken egg and so on it goes.
Bottom line: You can’t have a chicken or an egg without the other and that also applies to giving and receiving.
Think of giving and receiving as a gate that must swing both ways.
Receiving is harder to do….accept that compliment, accept that offer of help.So how do you grease those hinges so the gate swings easily and effortlessly in both directions?
The easiest way to begin exercising and stretching those receive muscles is practicing gratitude.
Each day offers us the gift of being a special occasion if we can simply learn that as well as giving, it is blessed to receive with grace and a grateful heart. Sarah Ban Breathnach
Gratitude: A feeling, emotion or attitude of thankfulness or appreciation. The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation.
And the easiest way to do that is keep a gratitude journal. More on that soon.
Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it. Rabindranath Tagore
Leave a Reply