Happiness is...

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive'" (Acts 20:35).

Let's see now. Is this saying in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John? One of Paul's epistles? One of the apocryphal, pseudepigraphic or gnostic Gospels?

No, this is one of the so-called “lost sayings” of Jesus, one of the "many other things that Jesus did (and said), which if they were written one by one..., even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John 21:25). It was a truism embedded in the memories of those who followed Jesus.

The saying is a beatitude, in agreement with much of what Jesus said about the happiness that comes from giving oneself away. Acquisition never made anyone happy. The more we get the more we want and the end is a mad quest to get more, an obsession that is empirically verified in the lives of the rich and famous. 

I shared Jesus’ lost saying with the fair Caroline this morning and she gave it a novel twist. If it's more blessed to give than receive, our weakness can become an occasion for others to give and enter into joy. The Friends have always contended that God placed the old and the feeble among us that the strong may be blessed in their giving. 

I must admit that I find it easier to give than to receive. I’m an independent cuss. My father impressed upon me his credo that we should never ask others to do for us what we can do for ourselves. It's a good rule in so far as it keeps us from mooching off our friends, but it can make us proud and unwilling to receive. 

Aging has a way of dealing with our hubris however: As we become more helpless we have to depend on the strong and thus we give them a blessing.

David Roper

4.13.19