It doesn’t happen very often anymore, but there are some mornings in our house when Walker and Arthur are awake, and they are both joyful and filled with wonder. Right from the beginning they are quiet and still marveling at the sunlight shining through the windows. They are peaceful, cuddling on the couch with Amy and me as we sip mugs of coffee and cups of milk together. It doesn’t happen very often but, on one of those mornings recently, I was reminded of a poem by Mary Oliver:

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.[i]

I wish I could keep things as simple in my mind as the bluebird does. I wish I could keep hold of only positive thoughts, deep and abiding faith, strong and firmly grounded hope. But my experience is that every minute is filled with a discordant chorus of thoughts competing for attention. Some are constructive; some are not.

Do you ever wish you could stay optimistic at all times, even when the world around you seems to be falling apart? Do you ever wish that your good deeds would find reciprocation, and that an unbroken chain of goodwill might transform the world’s conflict and iniquity into peace, liberty, and justice for all?

Contentment in a troubled world is difficult to hold on to; we want to grasp at security, seize control of what we think we deserve, establish power over others, and horde resources we cannot possibly hope to make the best use of. All of our reactive fear, our immature strivings, our practiced hostility only drive us further into disarray.

Couldn’t it be time we try something else? Maybe it’s time to listen to the prophets, their promise even to those who (rightfully or not) feel they have no strength – no strength in numbers, in means, or in might. Their promise is that God cares for us (all of us) and that we have a chance to be part of God’s kingdom, to belong somewhere, to belong to someone, and to be able to appeal to One who is above all.

All we are asked to do is to give up what we cling to (our security, our control, our power, our resources, our fear, our strivings, our hostility, which will not budge). Because our thoughts, even if they start small, even if they begin with just an appeal to preserve something for ourselves, our thoughts ultimately take us to where we do not want to be, and our emotions drive us to where we do not want to dwell, and our interests, our traits, our instincts, define us in ways we wish we could escape.

Step by step, from the smallest measure of selfishness, we construct cages of our own hell as our house rather than dwell in God’s heaven on earth. Observations by the likes of Anne Frank tell us what this hell looks like:

Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone.[ii]

We live in this hell; our neighbors and friends live in this hell. It exists because of the world’s callous and well-worn patterns of selfishness and greed, ruthlessness and deceit. Those patterns thrive because we refuse to let go of our false sense of security, control, and power, our fruitless pursuit of resources, our senseless fear and strivings. We are gripped by self-interest, and we cannot hope to be free from the hostility we feel toward a world filled with others, nor its Creator, or our deepest selves – the deepest selves longing for connection and compassion, forgiveness and acceptance. We cannot hope to be whole, cannot hope to be true to our deepest and truest selves, until we let go of our own plans and give up our efforts at control.

Would that be so hard? Or does it frighten you and me? If it does frighten you, then perhaps Jesus was speaking to you when he declared: “Do not be afraid little flock. It is your father’s good pleasure to give to you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32), to give to you an entire kingdom, to give to you. The father does. You do not take it; you do not earn it; you do not keep it from others.

The Creator gives it to you. What do you do? You sell your possessions, and then you give alms. That’s all you do; you give up what you have. And you are given the kingdom, and you make purses for yourselves that do not wear out; they are not made of leather; they are made out of love; and they hold an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near, nor moth destroys, for where your treasure is there your heart will be also.

All you have to do is sell your possessions and give alms. Give alms: Give a bottle of water to an addict on the median. Give alms: Write letters to lawmakers to legislate plans and programs for the rightful healing of the sick. Give alms: Clothe and care for migrants struggling to get by in this world. Give alms: Purchase school supplies for children who lost their crayons because their families were evicted by landlords eager to raise rents. Give alms: Pay off lunch debts incurred by children in public schools because they can’t afford to buy their own meals, and our neighbors have stopped providing food to them.

Give alms: Deliver groceries to food pantries so that the people on fixed incomes can manage to eat this month. Give alms when you’re starting out and just trying to figure out what to do to make the world a little kinder. Give alms when it’s been a long week and you are drained and the people around you do not inspire you, and the powers and principalities of this world wage war and madness. Give alms

when you are unsure that you’re making any difference at all or that anyone this side of heaven sees your good deeds, much less would join you when you feel alone and caring for others, and you are tired of trying.

Give alms, because even if you think that it’s worthless, even if you think it’s meaningless, your misgivings don’t matter near as much as your good deeds matter to God and to the people around you. It might not turn the tide; you might never know if anyone’s life has changed; you may never know if someone would have died of thirst or unhealed wounds or exposure to the elements or starvation or any other iteration of poverty and misery, but that is not for you and me to know.

All that is before you is a single choice you can choose every time: Give alms or not. Know that when you are saying that you will give, it means that you give hope, and you breathe in contentment, in the world’s gifts as they are. And you put your trust in One who is pleased to give you an entire kingdom from above.

To give alms is to nudge your heart a little closer to God’s, a little higher toward heaven. That’s what to give alms is.

And to withhold alms to close your eyes to the needs of the world around you, to leave the sick and suffering to make their way through the world alone. It is to declare with your actions that your sense of control, your strivings and pursuits, your tightly held prejudices and plans, your hostilities and grudges, your iniquities and conflicts, your very own hell of your own choosing, matters more than the heaven we are all offered from God our Creator.

And your obsession with control will kill you, unless you let it go, one day at a time, one dollar at a time, one possession at a time, by giving alms – alms to those around you who are in need, those around you who are in need of a neighbor who is kind, in need of a stranger who is generous, in need of a God who speaks gently to us and calls us all members of the Lord’s little flock, and who restores us all to fullness and who brings us all into a kingdom of love and light.  May we each receive that kingdom this day, and may the world be restored from its disarray. Would you take your part, by giving alms?

I pray you will. Amen.

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[i] Mary Oliver, “What Gorgeous Thing” in Blue Horses (London: Corsair, 2018). 

[ii] Anne Frank, entry January 13, 1943 in The Diary of a Young Girl (London: Longman, 1989).