Freely given, freely give

Walking back to my hotel tonight after a lovely dinner with Larry Augustin and his family at Amaya in London, I was surprised by the peace of Hyde Park:



A warm feeling of happiness came over me as I realized how lucky I was to be walking there, seeing that (OK, it might have been the chocolate dessert I had, but...). I'm very, very blessed.

It actually makes me realize that I need to start being much more generous with my time, and I spent the remainder of my walk trying to figure out ways that I could use my means to enable others to live like I do.

Jen and I aren't rich, but we're comfortable. We don't spend much time thinking about starvation. (Fast Sunday doesn't last that long. :-) We worry about things like which soccer teams our kids are on, the teachers they get in school, etc. What could I/we be doing to lift others out of subsistence living such that they can more comfortably concern themselves with college rather than simply learning to read?

We give at least 10 percent to our church, but I'm thinking there must be more that we can do. I certainly know that there's more that I must do. I've been given far too much not to be more liberal in my sharing of it.

But what? I really don't know. I feel like education is probably at the heart of all the good that I've experienced: education is the gateway to faith, to professional attainment, and to personal enjoyment (Reading Dickens or Steinbeck provide incalculable happiness to me).

So maybe that's where I should begin....

I'm really not sure. But I do want to do more than fret about this. I just need to figure out how to start.