#490. Giving people the easy stuff.
Before I met my wife, I stored my money in empty Midori bottles instead of a savings account. (Feel free to read that sentence again because it’s a doozy.) After graduating from college, while at my second “real job,” I decided that the best long term financial plan for me was probably to cash my check in dimes, unroll the dimes and then place them inside sticky, empty bottles of Midori liquor.
I was like some sort of suburban pirate, living with my parents, storing my hard earned booty in bottles. I was what the ladies call “a real catch.”
A decade later, I’ve grown up a little. I now have a savings account and direct deposit and a dozen other little things that are slightly more sophisticated than my bottle financial plan. And I don’t think about money much now. It’s not that we’re rolling in cake, we just know where it’s going, we’ve done the Dave Ramsey thing, and have discovered how to spend less than we make. Revolutionary idea, right? Our money automatically goes where it’s supposed to go without me getting that involved. Including our tithe check. That one marches off to a few different places each month and I can cross the word “generous” off my Christian to do list.
One of the places we give to is an orphanage my Uncle helped start in Kenya. They have over 300 students, many of which were orphaned by the AIDS epidemic or who themselves suffer with the disease. It’s an amazing place and I am genuinely happy that we are able to sponsor six different kids right now. But I realized during a conversation in my small group the other night that I’m giving all those kids something that doesn’t really matter to me. I’m not sacrificing to give them anything. I’m not really even changing my life all that much to create room for them in my heart. I’m giving them a check my wife writes, with an asset I don’t think about that often, money.
The asset I care most about, the one that is my most precious resource right now, the one I covet most desperately? That one I am hoarding for myself. That one I don’t even give them a scrap of. That one is just for me.
That one is time.
I could probably fill a suitcase with the amount of letters the six kids in Kenya have written me and my family. That’s like a small basketball team and they are able to generate quite a lot of mail. But do you know how many times I’ve written them? Zero. Sure, I give them money, and occasionally if I bring the mail in that day and see a letter from them, I will think to myself, “Oh yeah Africa. We’re so kind to give them money.” And then I’ll go right back to living my life without giving them a second of thought for another month.
The kids know too. They are well aware that I am not writing them letters. One of them wrote us a few months ago and said something like, “I pray that God will give you the strength to write me a letter.” Ouch.
The worst part is that I can’t claim I don’t like to write. I love to write. I’ve written the equivalent of a 1,000 page book on my blogs in the last year. But I haven’t written those kids, because I’m not generous with my time. I get the small hit of feeling good about myself because I’ve given money, but meanwhile have really kept the resource I care about most to myself.
And on top of that, I can’t even act like the Bible doesn’t address stuff like this head on. I mean it would be nice if I could pretend this issue was fuzzy and gray, but it’s not.
In 2 Samuel 24, David wants to build an altar to God on the threshing floor of a guy named Araunah the Jebusite. Araunah, possessing perhaps the only obscure Biblical name none of my friends have used for their kids, offers to give David the threshing floor for free. David’s response is instant and unfortunate:
“No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
It’s unfortunate because it convicts me about the personal costs associated with my offering. When I give a tiny portion of the money that God has given my family to help those kids in Africa, I am not giving something that costs me much. For me to give them time, for me to not go jogging one night because the African kids are going to get that hour instead of me, or for me to use one of “my” Friday nights to write six letters and pray about each of them, that costs me something.
Which is why that’s what we did last week. I wrote them letters. It cost me an hour and I felt that cost, but I can’t keep offering things that cost me nothing.
And that’s the question today:
Are you offering things that don’t cost you anything?
