Wednesday, March 1,
2017
When you give to someone in need, don’t do as the hypocrites do—blowing
trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of
charity! I tell you the truth, they have
received all the reward they will ever get.
But when you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what
your right hand is doing. Matthew 6:2-3(NLT)
As the Lenten season begins it’s time to focus inward, and the attitudes
we bring to our everyday walk with Christ.
In this
part of the Sermon on the Mountain Jesus warns that all the best
results of giving disappear when you pat yourself on the back for being so
generous. To be certain, if you happen
to have billions, and give a lot of it away, as did Bill Gates and other
notables, it will make news – it’s hard to hide that much money changing
hands! But whether or not it becomes
news isn’t why Jesus said to keep our giving a private matter.
Our more
important consideration is the needy person who is receiving. When you draw attention to what you give, the
needy one who is receiving loses the opportunity to offer appropriate praise to
God. Public humiliation can turn
thankfulness into envy or even despising the giver. Despite the giver’s best intentions to help,
the gift can become a destructive force, rather than a blessing.
So
What’s the Best Way to Give?
Jesus used a phrase that is pretty self-evident; don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.
Given the reality of hand-eye coordination, and short of a neurological
intervention, the right and left hands of any person know what the other is
doing. So it’s not possible to literally
hide from the left hand what the right is up to. And neither does that explain Jesus’ meaning
about how to give. The saying is more an
analogy which helps us understand the extreme caution we should take when it
comes to the opportunity of being a blessing to another person.
A friend of mine asked me to be involved in blessing young pastors and
their families. He had only one
condition to which I had to agree – his anonymity; I was to never reveal that
he was the one giving the gift. The gift
itself was vacation time for pastors of small churches. This friend of mine had seen some situations
where young ministry families desperately needed the kind of worry-free time
away in order to recharge and focus on each other, and not everyone else’s
needs. The demands of ministry and lack
of funds are real deterrents to having time away.
Each
family we identified received a gift of four days and three nights at Disney,
with hotel, attractions, food and spending money all provided. Some of the pastoral families that received
this blessing had as many as five children, and could never have afforded this
kind of getaway.
Over
the few years I was involved in this ministry I saw tears of gratitude and
thankfulness from parents who knew God had dropped a blessing on their
doorstep. And I’m not sure they received
the biggest blessing. I was privy to
knowing both the giver and the recipients, and the joy on both sides was a
double-blessing to me.
For You Today
Taking
some time during this Lenten season of preparation and repentance to look at
what…and how…you give should be accompanied by a prayer for God to lead you
into the joy of left and right-handed blindness!
NOTES
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