Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba, the world’s largest
retailer and e-commerce company. His success has made him the richest man in
China with an estimated net worth of $38 billion.
He announced today that he has donated one hundred million yuan ($14.4 million) through his foundation to help find a vaccine for the Wuhan coronavirus. He has earmarked $5.8 million for two Chinese government research organizations, with the remainder to be used to support “prevention and treatment” measures.
Ma’s donation follows an announcement on Saturday that
Alibaba is setting up a one billion-yuan ($144 million) fund to buy medical
supplies for the Chinese provinces at the epicenter of the virus outbreak. The
company is also offering free AI computing power to scientific research
organizations working on a vaccine or treatments.
The power of resourced influence
Jack Ma’s capacity to give is obviously larger than that of
nearly every other human on the planet. Nonetheless, his example reminds us of
this fact: we all have influence we can leverage for the common good. The
question is less how much we have and more how much we are willing to give what
we have.
When C. S. Lewis was asked how much a Christian should
donate to charitable causes, he responded: “I do not believe one can
settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give
more than we can spare.”
When Jesus was asked which commandment in the Jewish law was
greatest, he responded with the Great Commandments to love our Lord and our
neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39). His word translated “love” in the Greek
New Testament is agape, the unconditional commitment to put the other
first. We “love” God when we put him first. We “love” our
neighbor “as ourselves” when we put our neighbor first.
What influence has God entrusted to you?
How will you serve someone in need by giving more than you
can spare today?
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