By Tom Ehrich

SPECIAL NOTE

I have applied for a small business grant from Chase Bank. They are awarding 12 grants to small enterprises whom they deem promising. You can help by going to this link — https://www.missionmainstreetgrants.com/business/detail/75201 — and voting for Morning Walk Media. I only need 250 votes. So if you act right now, I am getting close.

Thanks! This grant would enable us to expand our offerings to people like yourself.


October 23, 2013

The note above speaks to an exciting moment in this venture: we have several new offerings in the works. Funding will help them to happen.

More important, however, are the vision to make a difference and the response we engender.

Good ideas and receptive people matter more than funding. For God can use good ideas and receptive people, and in the end it is God who gives the increase.

Yesterday, for example, I gave blood at the Red Cross donor center adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. Even railroads running on time couldn’t match the efficiency of that operation. From start to finish, not a wasted moment, and plenty of kindness.

I think of blood donation centers in the same category as Habitat for Humanity builds, school fairs, parents coaching youth sports, people carrying food to the grieving, neighbors cleaning up after a storm: just plain goodness. Not costing much, if anything. Just good people doing good things on behalf of other people.

If you spend any time around such goodness, you realize that it is indeed “more blessed to give than to receive.” The awkward hammer-wielder who hangs drywall for a stranger receives palpable joy. So does the dad who watches a swimmer master fear and make it to the finish. Or the mom who sees neighbors cutting trees and hauling debris, and she shares a vat of stew with another storm-hit family.

In filling out the application for Chase’s grant, they asked what my enterprise contributed to others. I realized that we’re about 50-50. That is, for everything we do for a fee, we give away in equal measure. From free publications to free counsel to free collaterals, my colleagues and I receive the blessing of giving.

I say that with gratitude. It is a joy to be among people who know how to give.