"Aspiring to appropriate the spirit of the love commandment ['Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.’-Mark 12:30-31], I have developed a healthy appreciation for paradox, the ethical paradox.  Give and you shall receive; empty yourself and you shall be filled; lose yourself and be found.  Every sacrifice (the word means to render sacred), every work of love, or selfless deed of praise, is redemptive both for ourselves and for others.  Instead of feeling overwhelmed by a sense of insignificance and powerlessness, we lose ourselves together with our ineffectual fretfulness, in the concrete work of the commonwealth of God, the work of justice being done and love being shared, the work of healing and wholeness, the saving work.  Something powerful is at work here, akin to the proverbial planting of a mustard seed, yielding well beyond anything that might be measured in terms of self-gratification on a quid pro quo basis.  In the words of Jesus, 'the measure you give will be the measure you set, and still more will be given you' (Mark 4:24)."

-- Forrest Church