More Blessed to Give


During our first few years in China, my wife witnessed something beautiful and instructive while taking a walk one day.  She noticed a small child strolling with her mother while clutching a ripe piece of fruit.  Within a few moments, this child happened upon a neighbor’s child approaching from the other direction.

The mother gently prodded her child to share the piece of fruit from her own hand with the approaching toddler.  Gracy found this interesting since the mother clearly had a bag full of the sweet fruit over her shoulder.  She could have easily provided some fruit for the child herself.  Instead, she insisted over her child’s silent protests that the fruit in her own hand must be what was given.

We knew instinctively Gracy had witnessed something very important.  And though we didn’t fully understand it at the time, what she had stumbled upon that day was something deeply embedded in Chinese culture that Western friends like ourselves sometimes struggle to fully figure out.  It is the principle of Reciprocity.  I look forward to unpacking my crude understanding of this rich principle in the next several posts.

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