The Grace of Receiving

Within the last week or two, I have been on the receiving end of some very gracious gifts. A couple of canisters of homemade and well-executed kimchi, a bottle of home-brewed mead, two bags of Costa Rican coffee, and a very kind postcard from a friend who shares my eclectic insider-outsider take on Christianity. Mead and Kimchi are in the pic (I added some pan-fried sausage).

For those not raised in the Church, just so you who know who were born and bred into the evangelical culture, we always feel like outsiders in some way even though we may have been years on the inside. That divide is pretty deep in the Church and not a whole lot of people talk and write about it. Maybe analogous to the Jew-Gentile divide in the early Church. Whaddya mean I can't eat lobstah?

If I am not mistaken, there is only one verse said by Jesus in the New Testament while he walked and talked in the body not spoken in the telling of the Gospel but then told later (outside of Revelation which is a different "beast" altogether). It is the verse relayed as spoken by Jesus but quoted by Paul in Acts: "It is more blessed to give than receive." 

Here is my question: How does it make you feel when someone gifts you something that you don't deserve? Here is how it causes me to feel....I need to reciprocate, figure out a way to not be in an imbalance here. We all know that there are rich and poor and in-between who have a sense of entitlement that is very soul-damaging. Here's the irony...it is hurtful to give in those scenarios or to give in the way that the asker wants (monetary). God, as Henry Drummond writes in his exposition on Love, says that true love will be less or more than that. That tossing the sixpence is too easy.

I get that I  am more entitled that than I realize so I had better tread carefully on this thin ice. Yet, in relationships where there is a giver and a receiver, being on the receiving side makes me feel vulnerable. I try to pay as I go so there is not any lingering obligation. Maybe grace means to me the ability to accept/receive and give appreciation. It blesses both the giver and receiver. And give generously when I have the opportunity.