ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

Available for over a year

Good morning. The British Heart Foundation yesterday published a survey on the nation’s attitudes to and practice of charity. The findings make interesting but not wholly encouraging reading. 73% of those polled say that they experienced a ‘feel good factor’ from giving time or money to charity. 62% gave to charity because they ‘genuinely wanted to help’. So far so good. But only 31% actually donate to charity every month, and the average donation per month was just £16.58. Well of course I know about the widow’s mite and I know that we have been going through a period of recession and austerity - £16.58 would be a great deal to give out of some household budgets. But at only just slightly more than 50p per day – the cost of a cheaper newspaper or a bag of crisps – it doesn’t look as though we could really represent ourselves as a nation of givers. Instead it seems that our motto might be that dreadfully misused saying ‘charity begins at home’ – which is often taken to mean, of course, that charity ends at home, and so never begins at all. What might motivate more of us to give more? According to that survey, 5% of respondents find someone who gives money to charity more attractive – so I suppose that if you are in the dating game, you might reckon on gaining a slight but crucial advantage over the competition by ostentatiously putting a £50 note into the next tin which is rattled at you in the street. But a charitable habit probably needs stronger roots than that. Words from the Lord’s Prayer - ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ –provide a perspective which might just make a difference. The words are certainly very well known, of course, but I am not sure their message is actually much taken to heart. Of course during an election everyone, it seems, becomes ‘hardworking’ – politicians are worried, I suppose, that we may think they don’t appreciate how tough life can seem, so every family is a hardworking family, every tax payer a hardworking tax payer, and so on. But that line ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ is meant to remind us that – even for the hardworking – our daily bread comes to us as a gift. To make just one point, the fact that we live in a society where the results of hard work are generally securely ours and not subject to expropriation at the whim of corrupt officials, or extorted by criminals, or liable to be lost to the vagaries of climate, is certainly not down to us and our efforts. It is mere good fortune – not hard work – which allows us to enjoy in peace and security the fruits of our labour. Jesus puts it more pithily – ‘freely you have received, freely give’ – a thought which might just push us over that very average 50 pence per day.