GENEROSITY OF SPIRIT

I read a story yesterday about a family that lost their home and everything in it to the wildfires in California. Some friends gathered donations and took the family to Target to get the children some essentials—underwear, toothbrushes, socks, a couple of little toys. 

After finding out why they were there, the manager at Target offered them a heavy discount, saying, “I lost my husband to cancer. I understand loss.” 

This Target manager understands it better than most of us, but the truth is, we all understand loss. We have all had moments of quiet desperation and grief. We all have, as my good friend says, “high water marks of grief” in our lives.

As this family left Target another stranger handed them a gift card and offered a hug. 

Perhaps this week as you have watched tragedy unfold for others, it has reminded you of moments of your own losses, and you have felt a call to help in some small way. I want to encourage that thought. There are so many ways to be generous, with or without money, and every one of us can find a way to relieve someone’s burden. 

Here are just a few ideas:

1.    Donate to the Red Cross or other humanitarian aid organizations

2.    Take cookies to your local fire house

3.    Give blood

4.    Volunteer your time somewhere in your community

5.    Pay for the car behind you in the drive-thru

6.    Give someone the benefit of the doubt

7.    Visit a neighbor

8.    Give a compliment

9.    Forgive

10.  Pray

11.  Send a Thank You note

12.  Leave a big tip

Remember that generosity is a state of being as much as it is an action. We can regard everyone in our lives, strangers and loved ones, with more grace and kindness and generosity.

There is a story that I have heard several times that generally applies to all of us universally. A young woman received some silk fabric as a gift. She had the thought that her neighbor, Spencer W. Kimball, the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had just gotten a new suit and perhaps he would like a new tie. She carefully sewed and wrapped the tie for him. 

But on her way to deliver the gift, she started to have doubts about her impulse to give this gift. She thought, “Who am I to make a tie for such an important man. He probably has plenty of ties.” 

Just as she was about to turn around and go home, the man’s wife, Camilla Kimball, opened the door. The girl explained hesitantly why she was there and her misgivings about the tie. Camilla Kimball took the young girl by the shoulders and said, “Susan, never suppress a generous thought.”

That is a concept that can serve all of us, at work and in our communities. Never suppress a generous thought.

Perhaps in the face of such monumental losses in our country, your impulse to help seems small and insignificant. But every generous extension of ourselves blesses both us and those we help and enlarges our humanity as a whole.

Truly, the losses have been great and will continue. Undoubtedly, for each one of us. But if it is not your turn right now, find a way—however small—to help and give relief to someone else. And never suppress a generous thought.