Refrain from others' pain, and you will have less of your own. There are many things for you to partake of, but another's pain is not one of them. You are not grander for taking on another's pain. That is not your role, although many of you have made that your role. You have thought of your role in another's life as solver of their pain, but that is not your role to fill. You cannot solve another's pain. Remove one thorn, and they will find another. Each must learn whatever it is that he has to learn.

You cannot feed the whole world. You cannot instruct the whole world.

You can help your neighbor best when you do not take on his pain. Making your heart hurt benefits no one.

I am not saying to be callous or uncaring or indifferent. I am saying to see beyond their pain and to remember My place in their lives. Your help can go only so far, and Mine can transcend the outer limits.

Look not to be so important in another's life.

Look to listen and understand. Most do not want your advice or your superior knowledge. Do you want someone's?

Do you want someone to appoint himself as your savior? I think not.

Help people without being obvious. Do not be so self-conscious about giving.

No one has to know you are helping. Help as you can, and call not attention to yourself. There is a tendency when you help another to make them feel less, not more. No one wants charity. You are not benevolent to make clear to another that you have more than they do — more money, more gifts in life, more savvy, more of whatever you think you have. Consider that someone who makes you feel benevolent has been benevolent to you.

I do not tell you not to give to another. I say give in My name. That is giving anonymously. That way they do not have to be grateful to you. And it helps them to know from whence help really comes, and that is from Me.

This is important what I am saying to you.

Leave food at another's door, but be not a raucous giver. Do not count what you give. Count what you are given.

Remember Who has given you your gifts.

I am the most Anonymous Giver of all. Remember it is I Who gives, and often I give through you. You are the messenger. A good messenger knows that the message he carries is not his. He is a deliverer of messages. By day or by night, he delivers a message from one to another. He is a neutral deliverer. He gives great boons in the names of others.

And so you are My great messengers.

Whatever good you do, I have given it to you to do, and I have given you the wherewithal.

Some deliver food. Some deliver cash. Some deliver wisdom. But you are only a carrier of what I have given to you to deliver. True giving is to know that it is not you who gives.

The state is not a giver. The federal government is not a giver. I am the Giver. They may write the check, but I am the Giver. All well-being comes from Me. All welfare comes from Me.

You do not even plant a garden. You may dig the hole for a tree, and you may lift it and put it in and replenish the soil, and feed the tree and water it, but it is I who is the Planter of the tree I gave to you.

You may give birth to a child, but it is My child. I conceived it and delivered it to you to carry to the world. The birth of a child is not in your reckoning. It is in Mine.

And so it is with ideas. They come from Me. You may think they come from you, but they originate with Me. You too are My idea, and I conceived you to help Me, and not so much to help others.