The concept—“the greater the distance between the giver and the receiver, the more the receiver develops a sense of entitlement”—also has profound spiritual applications. Our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, are the ultimate Givers. The more we distance ourselves from Them, the more entitled we feel. We begin to think that we deserve grace and are owed blessings. We are more prone to look around, identify inequities, and feel aggrieved—even offended—by the unfairness we perceive. While the unfairness can range from trivial to gut-wrenching, when we are distant from God, even small inequities loom large. We feel that God has an obligation to fix things—and fix them right now! ...The closer we are to Jesus Christ in the thoughts and intents of our hearts, the more we appreciate His innocent suffering, the more grateful we are for grace and forgiveness, and the more we want to repent and become like Him. Our absolute distance from Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ is important, but the direction we are heading is even more crucial. God is more pleased with repentant sinners who are trying to draw closer to Him than with self-righteous, faultfinding individuals who, like the Pharisees and scribes of old, do not realize how badly they need to repent.
I've been thinking about the concept of giver and receiver becoming one in a new light for the past few days. It occurs to me that when the receiver and the giver are very close, the act of giving becomes very meaningful and effective. Christ's gift to us, for example, is made extremely powerful when we (the receivers) choose to draw close to Him. In fact, He desires there to be no distance at all. There is perhaps no better way to symbolically indicate this than to have the receiver become the giver.
In a covenant context, the act of receiving is ideally followed by a desire to become a giver. This seems to be one of the unspoken patterns in scripture. (See here, for example, where Alma-2 subtly indicates to his son Helaman that through conversion, his words have become the word of God.)
I've been thinking about this same concept in relation to hand-filling in the story of Noah (explained in detail in this post) -- the covenant into which Noah entered not only offered him protection from the flood, into resulted in "all things" being delivered into his hands. (See Genesis 9:3.)
Here is another example of receiver becoming giver:
12 So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?
13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.
14 If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.
15 For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
16 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.
17 If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. (John 13)
The small meal ---> grand feast symbolism fits into this pattern. A willingness to receive a small part can lead us to developing the desire to consecrate all and this desire culminates in our ability to feast and then speak the word of God (2 Nephi 32:2-3).
This is one of the deeper meanings of Christ's invitation: "come, follow me" -- not only are we to do as He did while in mortality, we are intended to receive all that He received and "sit down on the right hand of the Father" and receive "eternal life" (see Doctrine & Covenants 20:24-26).