How Can I Make This For Three

In the original score of the musical Sound of Music, these beautiful lines were part of the song “You are sixteen going on seventeen”:

A bell is no bell till you ring it
A song is no song till you sing it
And love in your heart wasn't put there to stay
Love isn't love till you give it away.

The heart knows it – love is not love unless we give it away. We do not save what we keep for ourselves but we multiply what we give to others. Nature knows it. Unless a seed dies and gives up its life, no new life is ever possible. Science knows it – what we do not use we lose.  Muscles that are not used nor exercised soon waste away and get atrophied. Even in finance, money that is left idle soon loses its value to inflation.

People often ask the question, “What’s in it for me?” in making a decision. It is very natural and usually the first thing that comes to my mind when I have to choose. And I often wonder how I can change that natural impulse to make it more Christian, in keeping with Christ’s promise and challenge of making things a hundredfold more, or even a thousandfold more.

“How can I make this for three?” I am able to move beyond myself. I create more thus I have more to share. I am rewarded as Christ promised a hundredfold and even a thousandfold. Then, the bell is rung; the song is sung and love has grown deep.

To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
~ Psalm 50

Peter began to say to Jesus,
‘We have given up everything and followed you.”
Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you,
there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:
houses and brothers and sisters
and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.
But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Mark 10:28-31