Open the Word: Riddles and paradoxes

Riddles and paradoxes

• What is it that you take out down and put up out? (Answer: An umbrella.) What is it you have only if you give it away? How can you save and spend in the same act (and this is not about discounts)?

• A song says, ‘Love is something if you give it away.’ It is a common idea that if you give then you have less. Service is thought of as exhausting. Work is hard. Yet many people will say that they gain enormously from the time and effort they spend in helping others. It is said that a gift brings three blessings — to the one who receives, to the one who gives, and to God.

• It is hard to believe that all wealthy people are unhappy and all poor people are content. Yet some found the peace that formerly escaped them when they gave away their wealth and embraced poverty. Francis of Assisi is one among many who set an example of following Jesus through rejecting wealth and accepting poverty.

• St Paul writes, ‘We are treated as impostors, and yet are true, as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and see — we are alive; as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich: as having nothing, yet possessing everything’ 2 Corinthians 6.8-10.

• There are some who find that they are most alive when they risk death. Christians testify that life means most when it is given in love.