Coco Calling No. 121 - Giving Back…..

I’d been gnawing my perch all morning, and creating a pile of sawdust on the floor, when I suddenly decided that this shouldn’t be the way I live out my life. Because there’s a balance to be made between taking (and in my case), destroying the gifts of life for our own enjoyment, and giving something back to others. And I recalled how Albert Einstein had once said:

“It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.”

So maybe I should start to grow some trees around my cage…….

The problem is that for so many of us, the more we get, the more we want, and then the more we think only of ourselves. It’s always been this way, and it’s why Jesus once commented:

“How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18:24b-25)

So it always comes as a breath of fresh air to hear about someone that decides to give something back to the world. One such fellow was Andrew Carnegie. After very humble beginnings in Scotland, he moved with his family to America where he amassed a fortune by overseeing the expansion of the U.S. steel industry. By 1901, he was worth $480 million, but he went on to give away some $350 million of his fortune to charitable causes. His philosophy was that: “A man who dies rich dies disgraced.”

The world is now going through a time of great crisis as the Coronavirus marches its way into every different society. If ever there was a time for sharing and giving back, this is it. And that not only applies to the Andrew Carnegie’s of this world, but to all of us. By giving and sharing whatever we can, irrespective of how rich or poor we happen to be. Because collectively, we can all make a huge impact on the suffering of the world around us, -and that’s both the world of people as well as the natural world. Most of us hold the power in our hands; the question is what we choose to do with it……..

“If you’re in the luckiest 1% of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99%.” (Warren Buffet: American business tycoon).

“As He looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. ‘I tell you the truth,’ He said, ‘this poor widow has put in more than all of the others.’ (Luke 21:1-3)

#Einstein #Buffet #giving #sharing