The Seed Corn

Hollis lost his seed to the flood and needed about thirty sacks and I could spare two.

Two. I have gone over that number in my head more times than is reasonable and it does not move. Two sacks, out of what I had, without taking bread off my own table in the following fall.

And the honest thing, the thing I would not have admitted at the time, is that two sacks felt insulting. Thirty needed, two offered. It felt like the sort of gesture that makes a man look small in front of a neighbor he already respects, and I would rather have given nothing than have Hollis stand in my barn and be given two sacks against thirty.

So I did nothing for eleven days.

I want to be precise about what I was actually protecting in those eleven days, because it was not the corn. It was how the two sacks would look. There is a kind of pride that dresses itself up as not wanting to embarrass somebody, and I have worn it, and it fits well.

Toby broke it, though he did not know that is what he was doing. He asked me on the Thursday whether Mr. Hollis had got his seed, and I said not all of it, and he asked how much he still needed, and I said a fair bit, and he said, well, how much have we got, and I did not have an answer for him that I wanted to say out loud.

Two sacks went down there on the Friday morning, on the trailer, with Bucky standing in the barn door watching them go with his usual complete absence of opinion.

Hollis said thank you the way a man says thank you when he has been having eleven days of a different kind, which is to say not much and not lightly. He got the rest from four other people in ones and twos, and the field went in about nine days late and cropped about eight per cent down, and that is farming.

He told me in the summer that he had counted at one point and there had been eleven separate people. Eleven. Nobody had thirty. Nobody had anything close to thirty.

The measure is what a person has

Paul is organizing a collection and he says something that removes an entire objection before anybody makes it.

For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not. (2 Corinthians 8:12)

According to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not. That second clause exists because he knew somebody would be sitting there doing exactly the arithmetic I was doing in a barn.

The measure is not the need. The measure is not what other people can manage. The measure is what is in the hand, and the sentence rules out the comparison explicitly rather than leaving it to be inferred.

You are measured against what you have and never once against what you do not, and 2 Corinthians 8:12 says both halves of that out loud. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as a door opening instead of as a technicality.

And the first condition in the sentence is a willing mind, which comes before any amount is discussed. The willingness is the qualifying thing and the quantity is the reporting thing.

You have not been disqualified by the size of what you can manage. The written word puts willingness first and amount second, and His Spirit is what makes that order land in somebody who has been ashamed of a number.

Where the collection came from

The example Paul uses to set this up is not a wealthy church, and that is the part that usually gets skipped.

How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. (2 Corinthians 8:2)

Their deep poverty. He is holding up as the model a group of people who had nothing, in a hard year, and he is not embarrassed about it and he does not soften it.

And the phrase he uses next is that they gave beyond their power, and that they had to ask to be allowed to, which is a strange sentence and is in there because it happened.

You are in the same company as the people Paul actually held up. 2 Corinthians 8:2 makes deep poverty part of the commendation rather than an excuse, and the Spirit of God is what makes that read as belonging rather than as pressure.

There is nothing anywhere in that chapter about a return. Paul is careful about it in the next chapter too, and he keeps the whole thing about equality between churches rather than about anybody being repaid.

You have not been enrolled in an arrangement, and the passage never once turns into one. 2 Corinthians 8:14 talks about a balance between people rather than a benefit to the giver, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a chapter about money from becoming a mechanism.