Charity

"Charity is having patience with someone who has let us down.  It is resisting the impulse to become offended easily.  It is accepting weaknesses and shortcomings.  It is accepting people as they truly are.  It is looking beyond physical appearances to attributes that will not dim through time.  It is resisting the impulse to categorize others".  Thomas S. Monson

I taught the lesson on Charity this past week at church.  I learned a lot during that short time.  How many of us have ever said, or heard someone else say, "I don't take charity!"  I know that I have.  Yet, after this lesson, I think we need to realize exactly what charity is.  It is not something for nothing.  It is the pure Love of Christ.  So, if we don't take charity, does that mean we don't want to take His Love into our lives? 
If we don't accept service from others from time to time, does that mean we don't accept His Love?
We all need to serve.  We need to become more like Him.  We we don't allow others to help and serve, I am starting to think that we stop their progression as well as our own.
There is a difference between charity and getting something for nothing.  Charity is given and done in love.  The something for nothing principle is given because it is owed.
The only debt we owe is the one to Him for all that He has done for us.  For our lives, our chances, for our eternal being.  We owe Him everything that we are or hope to be.  I want to become more like Him.  Instead of thinking of charity as something shameful, maybe we should think about it as something that brings us all a little closer to His love.
And isn't that really why we are here in the first place?

“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” 

~Elizabeth Gilbert~