Today’s “Love Story” comes from Brennan Manning’s Ruthless Trust. Quoting Christian statistician George Barna Jr. in The Saints Among Us, Manning reminds us all that the trusting heart is, first and foremost, a thankful — and that those thankful hearts are often found in unexpected places, including the poor and marginalized. Barna writes:

In many cases there are people who have known dire economic straits, yet their trust has enabled them to step outside their grim conditions and to find jooy in life, so they run against the grain. The fact they are downscale suggests that though they are burdened by economic problems, they are not overcome by them. they are more forgiving, more grateful and more likely to be unprejudiced, as well as twice as likely to be involved in outreach to neighbors, as persons at the lower end of the spiritual commitment scale. In other studies we have done, such as financial giving, we found that the poor give a larger proportion of their income to charity than the rich. being surrounded by misery, they see opportunities to help on every side. The rich, especially now, with the widening gap between rich and poor, hae a tendency to cordon themselves off and therefore don’t see much of the grimness of life.

Manning concludes the chapter with this memorable line: “To be grateful for an unanswered prayer, to give thanks in a state of interior desolation, to trust in the love of God in the face of marvels, cruel circumstances, obscenities, and commonplaces of life is to whispoer a doxology in the darkness.”

Today’s Love in Action: Find a way to be a source of unexpected blessing to someone else today.