I Shared It and It Did Not Come Back

I had good gloves. They were the ones with the leather across the palm and my dad got them for me in a shop in town and they are the only thing I own that came from a shop in town.

At the winter fair a boy I do not know very well was crying about his hands, which he was embarrassed about and which was genuinely reasonable because it was very cold and he did not have anything. I gave him my gloves. Not lent. I said take them, and I meant it at the time and I would still say I meant it.

I did not get them back.

I did not expect to get them back straight away and I am not saying I did. But somewhere in the following two weeks I found out that I had been expecting something, and I did not know what, and I have thought about that quite a lot.

Not the gloves back. Something. That his mother would ring, maybe. That somebody would tell my dad. That the boy would come and find me at the next thing and say something about it in front of other people. It was not even a thought, it was more like a shape in the back of my head that I only noticed when it did not get filled.

Nothing happened. Nobody rang. I saw him in March and he did not mention it and I do not think he was being rude, I think he genuinely did not remember, and I stood there and had to decide what to do with my face.

Bucky ate one of the spare gloves out of the drawer that same month, which meant I went the rest of the winter in one gray glove and one of my dad's, which is its own separate problem and is not the point.

I told Dad in April, sideways and not straight out, and he did not say the thing I was fishing for. He said that giving does not make anything come back and that anybody who tells a child it does is teaching them a trade, and that a trade is a fine thing but nobody should call it giving.

The strangest instruction about giving

Jesus gives a rule about giving that is impossible to obey literally and is completely clear once a person has waited for something that did not come.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6:3, 4)

Let not thy left hand know. He is not describing hands. He is describing a person keeping a thing so far out of their own accounting that even the part of them that keeps score is not told.

Which means He knows about the shape in the back of the head. The whole instruction exists because that shape is the ordinary human condition and He is naming it rather than pretending it is not there.

You are being addressed by somebody who already knew about the part of you that keeps score. Matthew 6:3 legislates for exactly that, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as being understood rather than as being caught.

The reward named is not a return of the thing. It is the Father seeing, and the seeing is the whole of what is offered.

You have not been promised the gloves back, and nothing in this passage says you were. The written word puts the reward in being seen by God, and His Spirit is what makes being seen sound like enough rather than like a substitute.

The plain thing nobody says to children

I want to say this straight because my dad said it straight to me and it is the most useful sentence anybody has ever handed me about this.

Giving does not make things come back.

There is a whole way of teaching this that turns it into an arrangement, and children can smell an arrangement, and when the arrangement does not pay out they conclude either that God did not keep His side or that they did it wrong. Both of those are damage, and both of them come from teaching a trade and calling it giving.

Scripture is not shy about it. The verse right before the left hand one is about people who already have what they were after:

Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. (Matthew 6:2)

They have their reward. It is not that they get nothing. It is that they got the thing they were actually going for, and the transaction is closed, and there is nothing else coming.

You are not owed anything by anybody, and Matthew 6:2 says a person who wanted something got it and the account is settled. The Spirit of God is what makes that clean rather than bleak.

And the alternative offered is not a bigger payment. It is a different auditor.

You have been offered somebody who sees in secret rather than a return in public. Matthew 6:4 names the Father as the one watching, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from an instruction into something a boy can hold in March.