Giving and Receiving – 20 July 2006

St. Matthew’s has been supporting a work with street children in Beira, Mozambique for many years and Jackie and I will be visiting our friends there at Casa Re’Om. We follow a long line of visitors from St. Matthew’s and we are looking forward to meeting Pastor Bonga, the rest of the team and the boys, especially as I had planned to go 3 years ago and was prevented by a detached retina.

 

A team of us are going and we shall be involved in different ways, meeting people, spending times with the boys, helping practically with the new buildings – and I understand I’m to be doing some teaching.

 

It is so easy to go on a trip like this thinking that we are going to be giving of our selves to the mission project – in reality everyone who has been has felt the exact opposite. They have returned to this country conscious of how much they have received from our friends in Beira through their example of faithfully living out the gospel in challenging circumstances, and with such great joy.

 

If we don’t come back feeling the same we shall have missed the point! 

 

Paul says: “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"  Acts 20:35 (NIV)

 

But in the spiritual economy it was St. Francis of Assisi who recognised that it is “in giving to all men that we receive”.