The Cost of Giving (Part IV)

The Gift of the Heart

Can you open your heart? Can you give something of yourself that is beyond time, treasure and emotional energy? Can you give your heart to a hurting world, openly, honestly, without regret?

It is inordinately difficult, this giving of our heart and often painful beyond bearing. Parents understand this; lovers understand it; husband and wife understand it; and at least once upon a time, at the moment of salvation, we Christians and our Savior understood it. The gift of the heart is a gift given from person to person, one person at a time. It always includes time, treasure, and emotional energy, but it is always more than that.

It starts with our own self. Can you, can I accept myself, just as I am, just as Jesus accepted me? Can I extend a blessing, a blessing to be well, happy, and fulfilled to my own person? It is harder than it sounds. If we can not love ourselves, how can we love our families, our neighbors, strangers, or even our enemies, as our Lord commands?

Would we do anything possible to spare another from pain, from suffering? I have known parents, grandparents who honestly would go through anything to spare their children or grandchildren from suffering and pain. Can we open our hearts to another in that same way? No matter what the risk. No matter what the cost.

Can I find unconditional joy in the success and happiness of another, even as I suffer failure, disappointment, or betrayal?

It is very dangerous this gift of the open heart. To expose ourselves that completely to another, to open ourselves completely to pain, disappointment, betrayal, and even death, is dangerous beyond words. If we open our hearts to another we will experience pain. It is inevitable. The center of the human heart is tender beyond imagination. But ultimately, this gamble is what makes us human. In seeking freedom for others, without conditions, without limit we ultimately become free.

Some Catholics and a few Orthodox practice a meditation on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In this devotion they come to understand that Christ’s Divine Heart and his love for a fallen hurting world, His love for you, and for me are inseparable.

John 3:16 (NIV)

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

In picturing this meditation on the mystery of the incarnation, Jesus is showing his heart and the wounds he suffered on the cross. The perfect model of the love of God the Father and the love of neighbor is portrayed as a heart on fire surrounded with a crown of thorns. If that makes no sense to you, ask the parent of a teenager; ask a lover; and above all ask your own heart. It will answer you.

His ministry here on earth cost Jesus in terms of time, treasure, and emotional energy. I imagine He found His life here on earth extremely painful and disappointing, even before His crucifixion. Can we expect anything different?

From the Love Chapter

First Corinthians 13: 1-13 (NIV)

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
But have not love,
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,
And if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,
But have not love, I am nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always, hope, always preserves.

Love never fails.
But where there are prophecies, they will cease;
Where there are tongues they will be stilled;
Where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
But when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child,
I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child.

When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
Now we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror;
Then we shall see face to face.

Now I know in part; then I shall know fully,
Even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.
But the greatest of these is love.