"Come with me to a third-grade classroom. There is a nine-year-old kid sitting at his desk and all of a sudden, there is a puddle between his feet and the front of his pants are wet. He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It's never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they'll never speak to him again as long as he lives.
The boy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his head down and prays this prayer, "Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now I'm dead meat."
He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered. As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy's lap.
The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!"
Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk.
This sympathy is wonderful. But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has been transferred to someone else - Susie.
She tries to help, but they tell her to get out. You've done enough, you klutz!"
Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy walks over to Susie and whispers, "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Susie whispers back, "I wet my pants once too."
May God help us see the opportunities that are always around us to do good."
Today, it was time. My 8-year-old computer would cost more to fix than replace. I dreaded the very thought. Data scrubbing isn't a favorite activity and this project would be exceedingly time-consuming. The required clean-up and re-installations are far from finished.
Comparing and combining the files from the old hard-drive with multiple external drives to centralize only the relevant data forced the review of many gigabytes.
Included, were forgotten images and a number of them featured my mom. Emotionally, happy/sad could be the only description. There were a great many happy/happy photos too, of course!
Consolidating this data also revealed several 'maybe-write-something-about-this-someday' stories. Above is just one of them.
Observations concerning the combination of this novella with a recently heard homily bloomed in various ways.
It seems that gratitude is best exhibited when it costs something. The lesson here was immediately reinforced when I watched an episode from
The Good Doctor.
The scene portrayed an elderly brain surgeon showing his gratitude for the removal of a life-threatening glioma. He presented a small box to the Oncologist that was opened with suspicious apprehension followed by a questioning stare. "A baseball?", she said. Making it clear that she doesn't like the game, she chided him for giving her something that HE wanted instead of something SHE would like.
He explained that on his 13th birthday, he caught this very ball while sitting in the stands with his dad. He begged those famous players for their signatures on his newly treasured orb and has cherished this prize for nearly 60 years.
Certainly, he could have bought her a Rolex or something equally expensive as a grand gesture. But his intent was to give her something that far eclipsed personal value. He wanted her to know the intensity of his gratitude with the depth of his sacrifice.
Contemplating the above drew me to a couple of additional conclusions. This self-sacrificial, all-in type of gratitude applies to other virtues as well.
- There are times when generosity itself can be self-serving. It can work as a control mechanism. It is only possible to be truly generous if combined with a cost to ourselves.
- Placing our needs above others can only result in annoyance exhibited by some form of abusive behavior. The virtue of patience can only be exercised when we delay our satisfaction in favor of the immediate needs of another.
- Humility demands an acknowledgment that we are all made in God's image, none of us more important than the other. We are required to ignore our self-serving nature to lift-up the self-worth of our neighbor.
The little girl with the fishbowl sacrificed for her classmate. Her empathy cost her. She was humiliated so that her friend was not. I don't know if this novella is true and I was not able to determine the author. But sometimes, we don't need the details. This account is less 'entertaining fable' and more 'life-guiding lesson'.
For today, the lesson is centered on gratitude so I'll circle back in closing.
Most of us don't carry fish around with us all day long. We might not have star-studded sports paraphernalia looking for a new home either. But there's a better than average chance that someday we'll be presented with a choice. We can choose the Rolex or we can choose the self-sacrificial baseball.
If that sounds frightening, try to let go of the fear and allow for the possibility of surprise. Like data-scrubbing, you'll find a treasure that will change the life of another - along with yours.
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. 2 Corinthians 5:15
Another way to say 2 Corinthians
He wanted us to know the intensity of his love with the depth of his sacrifice.
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