Last summer I was invited to go with a group of Christian Science youth on a service trip to Costa Rica. I had been praying about, and researching, opportunities to volunteer abroad, as I love to travel and learn about new cultures. I feel as though I get more out of travel when I go with a purpose in mind. Here was an answer to prayer.
At times I have felt that community service, or volunteering, has become more of a trend, rather than the consequence of a sincere desire to give. So as I prayed about the trip, I asked myself, “What do I truly have to give? What exactly did Christ Jesus mean to love our neighbor as ourselves?” (see Mark 12:31).
Part of the curriculum for the trip was to read “The Greatest Thing in the World” by Henry Drummond, based on one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians (see I Corinthians, chap. 13), in which Drummond draws a contrast between the giving that is impelled by divine Love and the human giving we call charity. I decided to get a jump on things and read it before I went. Drummond says: “Love is greater than charity because the whole is greater than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of the innumerable avenues of Love, and there may even be, and there is, a great deal of charity without Love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to do it. Yet Love is just as often in the withholding. We purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at the copper’s cost. It is too cheap—too cheap for us, and often too dear for the beggar. If we really loved him we would either do more for him, or less” (pp. 16–17).
