Freddo has the right attitude

Every so often you run into someone whose actions illustrate an important principle.

The other day that someone was Freddo, a Tagbanwa man in the Philippines.

Freddo gave missionaries some mangoes. No, the principle is not that giving mangoes to missionaries makes them happy (the missionaries, that is).

It’s not Freddo’s generosity either.

What’s important is his motivation in light of his situation.

A lot of people feel like they don’t have much, and Freddo could probably say that and get away with it. He lives in a hut with his wife and 13 children, and scrapes his living out of fishing and gathering. You could even say he could get off the hook as far as giving, since he has so little to spare.

But that’s not the way Freddo was thinking.

Freddo has an attitude of gratitude. That should be a natural outgrowth of living in God’s grace. Perhaps that’s easier for Freddo, since he knows how rough and scary life was before he knew Jesus. But do any of us really have any excuse to not be grateful? We’ve received a tremendous gift that we don’t deserve and didn’t earn.

That gratitude welled up in Freddo. He needed to express it. He filled his arms with all the mangoes he could carry, and gave them to the messengers who had brought him the Word of God.

To Freddo, this wasn’t a sacrifice. This was an opportunity.

I’d like to be more like Freddo. Sometimes my heart isn’t in the right place when God presents opportunities for me to respond generously to His grace. But practicing generosity, and trying to keep the right perspective, is helping.

How’re you doing?