If there's one thing everyone likes, it's having to collect stuff from people, collecting fews good but not everyone enjoys having to give back, sadly what most of us really don't know is that the quickest way of receiving is giving.
I remember my pastor had said that during one of his church sermons and I didn't fully understand what he meant. I've always thought that we give only when we have enough for ourselves, but then my dad did something one day that not only shocked me but also gave me a different view on giving.
My dad has been a pastor for more than thirty years now, the man literally grew up in the church and always tries to do what he preaches. He's not a perfect man but he tries his best. There was a day he had asked me to accompany him to the bus-stop, he wasn't planning on getting on the bus but was going to meet someone there.
On our way there, he had with him his laptop in his bag. This was the laptop he got some few months ago and was literally our second television at the time whenever he wasn't working with it and there was no power supply. I remember how myself and my brothers would gather in the living room in the evening, seeing Nigerian movies from this laptop. So it basically was a very important gadget at home in our family, so imagine my shock when my dad had told me that evening that he was giving it away.
I had thought he meant he was selling it to get a better one but no, that wasn't the case. That evening, my dad had told me that God had asked him to give that laptop away to a friend who he felt needed it way more than he did and that was what he planned on doing. At the time, my little mind almost exploded from the thought of him giving away something so important and receiving nothing in return.
That was probably the first time I saw someone genuinely give something to someone, it was also the first time that I had entertained the thought that maybe, just maybe, my dad might be a little bit cuckoo in the head, although that thought lasted less than a second.
Now I know that many of you will be interested on knowing if that single act ended up bearing fruit in the future and the honest answer to that is that I really don't know because my dad is a very secretive person when it comes to things like that but to me, that shouldn't matter. What matters is how he was able to do something like that, in a time where he was too broke to get another laptop for himself.
But again just like I said in the beginning, the quickest way of receiving is giving. At first it might seem counterproductive, but trust me when I say it's not, you just have to believe in God and have faith.