Lenten book, Free of Charge
"Prelude: The Rose"

"in its essence freindship seems to consist more in giving than in recieving affection" (12).
This is not only the nature of God, but also the charge He has given us to do here on earth: to give more than you recieve.

"...love passionately desires the prescense of the beloved. Yet it was that same love that took deliberate and carefully planned steps that would lead to [His] absence" (12).
We thirst for the Living Water that the Lord is for our souls. SOme part of us, our heart and sold, know what we are destined and desire for and we can perhaps only know this through his absence in our physically-focused world. The Lord orchestrates everything. Everything is planned from our physical features, the flowers and clovers we weaved together as children, and the Gift of the Cross. It all has a purpose. How great is His absence, so that we are broken in this world and turn to Him to heal us, to love us, and give us life!

"To give is to lose" (14).
Modernity asserts that when we give, we ought to recieve in turn, that it is our right. We are supposed to profit at every point in our lives, or we really aren't living. That is a Lie.

"'But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart'" (16).
This quote from The Little Prince says quite simply what is often so difficult for mankind to grasp, let alone try to live out. Volf goes on to write that there is more to giving than truely seeing with the heart, but also for the hand to give generously (16). We are always busy judging each other and others, too; it all leaves us barren and blind. No one is joined or loved through such limitations.

"The gift of care made it his rose, the only one in the whole world. ...He was a boy in love, vibrating with desire and yet strangely at rest. He had found what he was looking for" (16).
When everything else is taken away from us, all we truly long for is care and love; someone who'll care and love us, for whom we can offer nothing but the same. We do that for our Lord, well, we would like to anyway. Instead, we have come to expect God to just shower us with goodness at no cost, without ever working for it. But we can show love to our God, show that we care, by giving unto others. If only we could disabuse ourselves of the justifications we offer and the way that society retorts that there is no such thing as true altruism - we have no profit for our loved ones, nor for ourselves.

Can we make giving meaningful again, past the point of boasting? Can we make it holy again?