What's 100 Bucks Really Worth?

Don't Let the Chain of Love Stop   

with YOU! 

Hey, I admit it.  I am not a country music fan.  But I confess that the lyrics can get caught in my head and mean alot to me. Have you ever heard Clay Walker's The Chain of Love?   The whole meaning gets stuck with me--whatever good you do is passed forward...and it returns in a different way--usually with the love magnified. 

Here’s the gist of the plot.  A man is driving home in a beat up Pontiac and fixes a flat for an old lady’s Mercedes.  He fixes more than the tire, however, because she is frightened in the dark where a hundred cars have passed her by.  “What do I owe you,” she asks?  He replies that his name is Joe” and then gives the song’s refrain: 

You don't owe me a thing, I've been there too
Someone once helped me out,
Just the way I'm helping you
If you really want to pay me back,
Here's what you do
Don't let the chain of love end with you

The story continues as the lady stops at a diner, and a waitress who is about “eight months along” and dead on her feet takes her order.  The lady leaves a $100 tip and writes the refrain on a napkin.  When the waitress arrives home that night, she tells the refrain to her husband about the “chain of love” and to keep it going.  Then she adds:  “Everything's gonna be alright, I love you, Joe!”  

Look what’s happened—they are all links in the chain of love.  The point is not that we benefit monetarily in the end, although that’s a nice touch.  The point is that we ourselves magnify love and receive it only if we give it away.  What good is love if it stops with us—a dead end? 

We are rather human links that pass along what can never be earned, but which is always a gift--the love of one person from another.  

 

We all know Jesus’ familiar lines—“it is more blessed to give than to receive.”  But do we understand that he is talking about the Chain of Love that began with him?  God sets love in motion in the world with his Son, and we regardless of how think it continues—in fact keep it going.  We know love because others have become links in the chain of love.  Isn’t that what we pass along--“Everything's gonna be alright, I love you, _____ and then we fill in the name?”   

By the way, what's the 100 bucks worth in this story? The cost to change the tire?  The generous tip? Or, the recognition and affirmation of another human being?