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WISDOM NUGGET: "Perhaps the greatest gift is a portion of thyself."

                                                                                          - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Photo Pin

Rule No. 5 of giving is the rule of love. Have you noticed that giving flows freely & lavishly when it has to do with someone you love? That is the natural order. Amy Carmichael once said “You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.” In other words, not every giver is a lover, but every true lover is a helpless giver. What naturally followed was that “He gave…”

The story is told of the husband of Mary Kay Ash, who used to be a man heavily addicted to smoking. All efforts by Mary Kay to help her husband stop smoking proved futile. That notwithstanding, he was a man that loved his family. Years had come and gone, but the man was still at it. Then one day, he saw a program on TV, where the devastating effects of second hand smoking was being discussed. Then it dawned on him, the dangers he had been exposing his family to, especially his wife, as they inhaled the smoke of tobacco, to which they were exposed when he smoked at home. There and then, the long standing appetite for smoking died a natural death. His love for his family infused him with seemingly invincible powers to give up his smoking habit and strangulated his appetite for tobacco. It must have cost him a lot to deal with, but for the love he had for his family, it was not a struggle. He gave it up freely. His family entered into another level of bliss and joy that perhaps they had never known.

You can’t love without giving. The reason why many struggle with giving is because of their lack of love. In fact, the extent to which you are not giving is the extent to which you are love deficient. This is how Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it, "Perhaps the greatest gift is a portion of thyself."