The Power of Gift Giving

I'm currently reading through Miroslav Volf's Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Here are a couple of great quotes just in time for the Christmas season.

This the the paradox of self-love: The more you fill the self, the more it echoes with the emptiness of unfulfillment. Living in itself and for itself, the self remains mysteriously unsatisfied and insatiable. . . . The paradox of true love is exactly the opposite . . . When loving truly, the self moves outside of itself to dwell with God and neighbor, and only then is it truly at home. (p.52)

You sit on your couch, beer or soda in your hand and junk food by your side watching TV for hours – that's ordinary. You work around the clock not because you have to feed your family, but for no other reason than to park a better car in your garage than your neighbors have – that's ordinary. You get up from the couch to play with your kids or you give your time and energy to help educate a prisoner or lend an ear to an elderly person – that's extraordinary. Why? Because you are giving. Every gift breaks the barrier between the sacred and the mundane and floods the mundane with the sacred. When a gift is given, life becomes extraordinary because God's own gift giving flows through the giver. (p.53-54)