It's easy to be generous to someone you like... but to a person you are not particularlly fond of... how do you find it in your heart to be give freely to?

 

In the past two years we've had an Indo maid, we've been giving her additional cash to send back to her family in Indonesia before Raya.  This year, I've been struggling with the thought.  I've grown to dislike her in many ways. I can't exactly pinpoint why.  Maybe I am prejudice towards her or maybe I am just being difficult... but I felt that she took advantage of our generosity and the freedom we gave her in numerous occasions... and that she doesn't deserve to be generous towards.

 

I once heard a sermon which talks about giving and the preacher quoted "a gift is undeserved".  If something is deserved, it is called a reward not a gift.  The meaning of generous is to give freely.  God woke me up and reminded me how He had gave freely towards us when we have taken Him for granted so many times.  Even when he was on the cross suffering, He pleaded with His father to forgive the very people who put Him on the cross.  When Jesus met the samaritan woman at the well, the woman didn't seem like a likeable person (someone who had divorced 5 times), yet Jesus showed her love and compassion generously.

 

God reminded me how much He has given me and now He just wanted me to give a tiny portion of what He has given me to His other child.. even when I don't like her very much.... hmm.. to that I had to say I will humbly and freely give.

 

Now that I've had it out of my mind, I can go back to rest.  I guess only God truly knows how to cure a troubled heart.

 

I've been thinking a lot about how I can do my bit for the environment, one thing we've been trying to do is to bring our own reusable containers when we go for takeaways.  We found that it takes some practice and learnings to make it work.  First we have to remember to bring the containers, second is to give very specific instructions to the store. One time we went to pack Nam Heong chicken rice, instead of putting all the food in our containers, the store keeper thought we were being picky about how our food is packed.  So he separated the chicken and the rice and at the end on top of our containers, he still used styrofoam boxes for the chickens... and we ended up using more styrofoam boxes than if it was packed normally.

 

Also been thinking about getting more plants for our condo.  Went about trying to find out how effective tree planting is in offsetting carbon dioxide.

 

This is what I found:

1) Average American family emits about 7.5 tons of CO2 a year

2) A single tree will absorb one ton of CO2 over its lifetime

 

After doing some maths, I just realised that adding a pot or two in our balcony is not going to save the world....  I guess it's the same for everything else, if everyone thinks like that than nothing will ever change.  If 10 million ppl add a pot of plants in their balcony, that would make a small difference maybe?  So I will still go ahead and if one day we do stay in a house, I'll make sure i have more garden space for trees.

 

At the mean time, I'll just cut down on my trips to the mall... which is probably more effective.