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Relational Generosity: Love Life

RELATIONAL GENEROSITY PART 2>>> by sarah bainbridge

I recently gave my father a book of short real-life stories from the War. When we hang out, or work on my boat, or have a meal, my dad will tell me another story from the book. It is full of heroes and miracles, because heroism is miraculous. A hero is someone who loves. Who gives themselves in life or death for other people. They give life, courageously.

No one has greater love than this, than to give their life for their friends.

I want to suggest that to override your survival instinct, to die for other people, is a miracle. Yet, something equally miraculous is to live for them and give life to them. Which is greater: to ‘give your life’ for another, or to ‘give your whole life’ for another? Either way, to give your life to give life, is love. And in doing so, we make friends of strangers, we become heroes and we are a miracle.

A generous life gives life to everything around it. It nourishes people. It builds them up and doesn’t tear them down. Words, actions, time spent, emotions invested, atmospheres created. Love keeps people alive. It saves them, it grows them, it fuels them, it strengthens them, it rests them, it energises them and empowers them.
Love = Life

The wise tell the wide-eyed that love is not love if it costs you nothing. Generous, love-giving life is costly. Life-coach Danny Silk teaches that ‘people that hold back, who are afraid to give, end up wanting, lacking, dissipating…Comfortable makes cowards of us all’.

However, when we count the cost and plant a little seed of goodness in someone, it grows into a tree that produces fruit, nourishment, shelter, it attracts rain and protects the soil it is planted in.

The ancient proverb says that if you plant a little bit of goodness in a person it grows and not only nourishes them, but also the world around them and it produces more seed to be planted. Relational generosity grows life exponentially.
Loving people, laying our lives down for them, serving them and their destiny involves many forms of ‘seed planting’. Living with goodness towards the world involves an outwards flow that is so often counter cultural:

Pulling Out the Gold

It’s easy to see the faults and weaknesses in people. I used to think I had an extra special gift of dirt spotting, but found out (eventually) that it was neither a gift nor a benefit to those around me. So I’m swapping trades and going for gold. If you recognise hidden goodness and gifts in someone and call it out, it actually empowers that thing to grow in them.

I used to live in gold-rush country where you can still pan the rivers for gold. When the tourists start sifting through the rivers they’re not scouring the pan looking for dirt, but instead, for the tiniest specs of gold. It’s those bits we pull out and hold up for everyone to see and it’s in those bits that there is wealth worth stewarding. Praising people, recognising the goodness and talents in them, building them up and encouraging them is like looking for gold that is always there somewhere.  It is also one of the most powerful things we could ever do, because life (or death) is in what we say. Each word of encouragement is a seed.

Creating Clouds

American author Bill Johnson says that ‘your internal reality becomes your external reality’. If you are peaceful you release peace. If you are a secure leader, you release security. Creating an atmosphere of safety around yourself brings peace, freedom and rest for the people sharing your life space. Being angry and volatile creates insecurity, defensiveness and stress. Consciously fostering a positive atmosphere of security and peace around you, allows people to grow and flourish in freedom.

Raising and Releasing

Good fathers and mothers are the most generous people around. They pour life into their children, encourage them and then let them fly free. Parents aren’t scared of their kids doing better than them – instead they are proud of them. We need to be like that with people. Committed to running the race with them from diapers to flight, not needing to keep them down or mould them into something they’re not. We all need to have adopted fathers and mothers in our lives. We need people we can listen to, honour and serve. This kind of relationship creates inheritance and life-cycles of relational generosity. Allowing your ceiling to be a floor for the people who follow you, will make you as generous as any parent.

Being a hero in life is all about sowing your own life into others. Planting the seed, protecting it, and then cultivating it into a great tree that gives life in its turn.
 

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