Borrow Mine

I think of things like courage, strength, endurance and faith in terms of the individual. Like, every person has their own ideal amount of these things, and we’re all little hamsters running, running, running on a wheel trying to get more of those things. We just never quite get enough. We never generate enough to reach the ideal amount, but dangit, we’re going to try our darndest to pull up our own bootstraps and go it alone.

But at church Sunday night, a song made me think of these things in a different way. Sort of shifted my paradigm. What if there’s one set amount of things like courage, strength, endurance, faith, for ALL of humanity. And that set amount is inherently enough. There is just the right amount of all those things here already. It’s just that at different points in time, different people have more of certain ones while others have less. And that means, in order to do life we need to share, to borrow.

It’s a simple concept...when I have too many tears, I need friends who have the smiles and can afford to hold my tears. And if my friends are struggling to reach that finish line, struggling to hold on to their faith and their hope, well, I better be ready to hand over some of mine, knowing that I’ll need it back some day. It’s just so often I’m too proud to receive or too selfish to give. I'm too busy running on that hamster wheel.

God tells us that we do, in fact, have all we need. We don’t need to somehow produce more. 2 Corinthians 9:8-11

"God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so that you're ready for anything and everything, more than just ready to do what needs to be done..."

And we better give what we get.
"He gives you something you can then give away, which grows into full-formed lives, robust in God, wealthy in every way, so that you can be generous in every way, producing with us great praise to God."

Maybe some of you know the song that prompted this line of thinking for me.
"You Can Borrow Mine":

Take my hand and walk with me a while
Cause it seems your smile has left you
And don't give in, when you fall apart
And your broken heart has failed you
I'll set a light up
On a hilltop
To show you my love
For this world to see

You can borrow mine
When your hope is gone
Borrow mine
When you can't go on
'Cause the world will not defeat you
When we're side by side
When your faith is hard to find
You can borrow mine