The Giver

What would a world without pain be like? What about a world without color, passion, or the ability to choose your livelihood? That’s the premise of The Giver by Lois Lowry, a book my daughter Maria suggested I read. In this fictional society, the elders from long ago – from back and back and back – decided that the world would be more livable if they removed pain from people’s lives. In the process, they also removed the things that make life complex and interesting like individuality, competition, challenge, physical intimacy, romance, and love. To make this world work, the elders embodied all of these difficult feelings and emotions in one person: “the giver” who is also the receiver of memory, the person who remembers what the world was like before pain was removed from people’s lives. I think The Giver is an excellent Lenten read. It suggests that it’s possible to live a life without pain. But that also demands that you live without the things that make life most meaningful: choice, passion, joy, and love. The giver I know, Jesus the Lord, is the one who through his passion, death and resurrection, redeems our pain and gives us a glimpse of God’s great joy.

-- Pat Jones