God loves a cheerful giver.
– II CORINTHIANS

In India we have a story about a man who was the perfect model of respectability, who always did what the letter of the law demanded. When he died, he was taken before the cosmic auditor. The auditor looked at the man’s record. There was not a single entry on the debit page. The auditor was impressed. Then he turned to the credit page and stared in astonishment. This page, too, was completely blank. He didn’t know what to do. The man had never helped anybody; never hurt anybody; never offended anybody; never loved anybody. He couldn’t be sent to heaven, but he couldn’t be sent to hell, either.

So the cosmic keeper of the books took him to the god of creation, and said, “You made this guy. What shall I do with him?”

The Creator looked at the statute books and couldn’t find a precedent to cover the case. And since this is a Hindu story, he said, “Take him to Krishna.”

Krishna said, “The buck stops here.” He examined the record very carefully and there, almost illegible, was an ancient credit entry: “Gave two cents to a beggar at the age of six.” “There,” Sri Krishna said, “return his two cents and send him back to earth to try again.” Until we have learned to give freely of ourselves, we have not learned how to live.

– Eknath Easwaran