It rained for most of June and all of July and we got one cut instead of three.
I need to explain what that means to somebody who does not farm. Hay is the winter. There is no other way to say it. You put grass in a barn in July and it is what stands between a cow and February, and if there is not enough of it in that barn then you are buying at winter prices from men who know exactly what you are.
We got one cut. It was a good cut and it was about sixty per cent of a normal year.
And Hollis got nothing. His ground is lower than ours and it flooded twice and by the time he could get a machine on it the crop had gone over, and he was standing in my yard on the fourteenth of August not asking for anything, which is much worse than asking.
Toby was on the gate. He had been on that gate for the whole conversation, and Bucky was beside him pulling wisps out of the load on the trailer, which is the only opinion a goat ever offers about a hard year.
I want to be honest about the arithmetic, because the arithmetic was real and it was not close. Sixty per cent of a normal year, divided by two farms, is thirty per cent of a normal year each, and thirty per cent does not get anybody through a winter. Splitting it evenly was not generous. It was two men going short instead of one.
So I did the other thing. I gave him about a third of what I had, which took me over a line I could not really afford and left him well under one he needed, and neither of us pretended otherwise.
We both bought hay in January. Both of us. At the price you would expect.
Toby asked me in February whether it had helped. And I said that it had not solved anything and that I would do it again, and he asked why, and that is the question I have been chewing on ever since, because the honest answer is not the one a man would like to give.
The verse is about the manner and not the sum
Paul writes about a collection being taken and the sentence he lands on is not about how much.
Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. (2 Corinthians 9:7)
Read what is being ruled out. Grudgingly, which is about the mood. And of necessity, which is about being made to. Both of those are conditions of the giver rather than sizes of the gift.
And then the thing God is said to love is not the gift. It is the giver, and specifically a giver in a particular state, which is a strange and warm thing to say about an offering.
You are the part of this that God is described as loving, and 2 Corinthians 9:7 puts the loving on the person rather than on the sum. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as being enjoyed instead of as being assessed.
There is a thing this verse is emphatically not saying, and it matters enough on a children's page to say out loud. It is not a mechanism. Nothing here says that a person who gives gets more. This whole site would be worthless if it taught a child a transaction and called it faith.
You have not been shown a machine, and Scripture never once puts the giving and the getting in that order. The written word describes a manner of giving and a God who is fond of it, and His Spirit is what keeps that from being turned into an arrangement.
What a short year does to a person
There is a passage in Deuteronomy about exactly this situation, and it is unusually direct about what happens in a person's head first.
If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother. (Deuteronomy 15:7)
The heart hardens before the hand shuts. That is the order in the sentence and it is the order in real life, and anybody who has stood in a yard doing arithmetic can tell you the hardening arrives first and arrives dressed as good sense.
And the instruction that follows is not a percentage: but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him.
You are able to keep a heart soft in a year that has every reason to harden it. Deuteronomy 15:7 names the hardening as the first move and warns about it there, and the Spirit of God is what makes an old warning arrive in a yard in August.
And there is a clause a little further on that is unexpectedly honest about the difficulty: thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him. It expects grief. It does not pretend the giving is painless.
You have not been asked to feel nothing about it. Deuteronomy 15:10 anticipates the grief instead of denying it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that honesty a relief rather than a loophole.
So here is the answer I finally have to a question a boy asked me in February.
You are not deciding this on arithmetic, and 2 Corinthians 9:7 puts God's love on the giver rather than on the sum. The Holy Spirit is what keeps that from being a soft thing to say and makes it the reason a man goes over a line he cannot afford.
It did not solve anything. I want that kept in, because the tidy version of this story would have Hollis and me getting through on faith and a shared load, and we did not, we both bought hay in January at the price men charge when they know what you are.
You have not been promised a return, and nothing in this is a trade. Deuteronomy 15:7 tells a man not to harden his heart and does not attach a single outcome to obeying it, and His Spirit is what makes that clean rather than disappointing.
And this is for the one doing the reading, who is dividing something short right now and has already done the sums twice. You were never going to be able to make it add up, and it was never the addition He was looking at. 2 Corinthians 9:7 names the giver as the thing loved, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes being loved enough to act on.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over your own arithmetic is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God says He loves a cheerful giver and says nothing at all about the amount, so speak to the sums: you have standing to address them because He is the one who named what He looks at. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is 2 Corinthians 9:7 and Deuteronomy 15:7 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Arithmetic that says there is not enough to divide, you are not the whole picture. The Word of God says God loveth a cheerful giver, and it puts the loving on the person and not on the size of the load.
- Hardening that arrives dressed as good sense, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am open handed and I am not shut, because Deuteronomy 15:7 names the heart hardening before the hand shuts and warns about it in that order.
- Father, You have never once measured me by whether it worked. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word expects my heart to be grieved when I give and does not pretend otherwise.
2 Corinthians 9:7
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