“You sit on the couch, beer or soda in your hand and junk food by your side watching TV for hours–that’s ordinary. Your work around the clock not because you have to feed your family, but for no other reason than to park a better car in your garage than your neighbors have–that’s ordinary. You get up from the couch to play with your kids or you give your time and energy to help educate a prisoner or lend an ear to an elderly person–that’s extraordinary. Why? Because you are giving. Every gift breaks the barrier between the sacred and the mundane and floods the mundane with the sacred. When a gift is given, life becomes extraordinary because God’s own gift giving flows through the giver.”
Miroslav Volf in Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005) 53-54.