Giving Your Gift

"Every person of every degree, state, sex, or condition without exception must have some personal and particular calling to walk in.” - William Perkins

Your life has a calling or vocation that reflects your talents. It is a gift life has given you. A gift only meant for you. Do you struggle with acceptance of your gift?

John G. Agno wrote, “A life signature is the tracing of the talents we are given and how we express them in our lives.” It is your life and talent to share with the world while you are here.

Some people keep the gift to themselves, forever protecting it from the outside world. They keep their gifts wrapped up neatly and stored away. Why do they fail to see how much greater the gift becomes when shared.

Your gift can have a tremendous impact on the lives of others. When you share your talent, your gift, it becomes more about those around you and less about you. Regardless of what you think, your life has a talent to it.

Release your talent and release it for others. The impact you have on others will create greatness in your life.

Stay inspired my friends.

Not Impossible

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Our ability to imagine is one of the greatest gifts we as humans have been given. The brain has a science all to itself in which I am sure someone much smarter than I could explain all of this. But in simple terms, millions of neurons contain varying bits of information we have collected over our lifetime.

Much of this information can be reconstructed in an ordered fashion as we learned the information. Such as retrieving '2', '3' and knowing that adding them together equals '5'. Or maybe knowing that 'light', 'switch', 'up' should result in the light turning on. Very basic, but you get the idea that we tend to reassemble all of these bits of data back into a learned pattern.

What if we took all those random bits of information and put them together?

This is what imagination is all about. Taking things learned and mixing them up. Looking for different possibilities. Some would say that much of what we imagine has already been imagined. Could be, but not to you. When you imagine something new, it is new to you, a first time acknowledgement.

When you act upon the imagination, you may find someone has already thought of it. But it wasn't thought of the same way you did. Take your imagination and run with it. Try the impossible that may have been said repeatedly was impossible. Achieve what others may say is unachievable.

Imagine all of the possibilities...

Stay inspired my friends!

Give Without Expectation

"When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous."

~Wayne Dyer~

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United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 8283

Noncash Charitable Contributions

Contributions From Which You Benefit

If you receive a benefit as a result of making a contribution to a qualified organization, you can deduct only the amount of your contribution that is more than the value of the benefit you receive.

In ex; you pay $65 for a ticket to a dinner-dance at a church. All the proceeds of the function go to the church. The ticket to the dinner-dance has a fair market value of $25. When you buy your ticket, you know that its value is less than your payment. To figure the amount of your charitable contribution, you subtract the value of the benefit you receive ($25) from your total payment ($65). You can deduct $40 as a charitable contribution to the church.

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Even the U.S. government acknowledges that to gift something, there can be no benefit to you if it truly is a gift. The gift given can not result in you receiving anything in return of tangible value. If so, that portion of the gift can not be claimed on your taxes.

Thank goodness we don't get taxed on the intangible aspects of giving. Or at least until govenrment officials figure out how to tax one's heart. The intangible benefit to giving can fill one's heart and soul with greatness. A benefit that can not be measured or taxed for that matter.

Gifts to others can come in many different forms such as money, clothing, or services. I see gifting not only in those forms, but in the every day things I see others do. The holding of a door open for another person, the friendly hello or carrying the grocery bags of another. The gifts we give manifest themselves in the form of a smile or handshake.

A gift can even be in the acknowledgement of the other person. So many times we walk through our day glancing away from others. We glance away from the homeless, the jobless, the lonely or the hungry. We even glance away from those we work with or even love. Too many times we are afraid to acknowledge another because we 'might' be asked for more.

Good golly, we might need to help someone that is in need. We might even have to forgo our tired state and interact. Yet the act of giving when nothing in return is expected or even seemingly possible will give back more then you imagine. An overwhelming feeling of energy and happiness fills your being.

Psychology Today wrote, "We've all heard the old adage that it's better to give than to receive, but why this is so is less known. As will become clear, giving is a gift—not only to others, but to ourselves—because it increases the bond between us and the person to whom we have given, tells us about ourselves and generally increases our feelings of competence."

In religious terms (2 Corinthians 8 & 9), translators had used an
English word, ‘liberality’/’liberal’ (or ‘generous’ in later versions) which suggested the size or extent of the gift, to represent a Greek word haplotes/haplos, which really meant ‘sincere, simple, unaffected,’ and related to the heart attitude or motive of the giver.

So giving comes from the heart with no expectation in return. This giving comes in large ways such as huge sums of money or other assets. But the majority of giving comes in small, seemingly meaningless ways. It is the small gifts which can have such a large impact on someone's life. Their life gets impacted and in an almost undetectable way, we get impacted.

So give without expectation of getting anything in return. Give with your heart and make a difference in the life of someone. Watch your own life gain something greater and best of all, no one can place a tax on that.

Living A Gift

“People so seldom say I love you And then it's either too late or love goes. So when I tell you I love you, It doesn't mean I know you'll never go, Only that I wish you didn't have to.”

I do not know where the above quote originated from but it is a wonderful way to express your love of someone. And for those that read my blog know of my mother's pancreatic cancer, understand the reality of the sickness but know that love can work great miracles. With all of the treatments available, a great doctor and the support of family and friends, she will do well.

The faith that surrounds my family is strong enough to believe that she has a chance to live longer then the odds. So this past week was spent visiting with her, my father and my siblings. I view it as having been given a gift. She felt well during our stay and the love we have always shared grew a bit stronger.

This gift we shared is one that many people never realize until much too late. All of us were 'living a gift' to have this time together. The same should be experienced each day of your life. Try to live this gift which is given to you.

It is a gift of loved ones, of being able to say good morning, good evening and extending your love in many different ways. To live your days embracing those around you and to not let the minor problems in life get in the way.

Enjoy your life and experience the love of all that goes with with it.