I Give Every Year And Nothing Comes Back

There is a shelf in your house and everything on it goes one way.

Cards you have kept, going back years. Every one of them from you, in the sense that every one of them came because you had sent something first, and there is not one on that shelf that arrived unprompted.

And you have not minded. For a long time you genuinely did not mind, and that was not a performance.

Something shifted about two years ago.

Now you notice. You notice on the day, and you notice a week after, and you notice in the spring when it has plainly not been thought about by anybody, and the noticing has a small sour edge on it that was not there before.

And you are ashamed of the sour edge. That is the actual problem. Not the absence of anything coming back. The fact that you have started keeping some kind of count without ever deciding to.

Let me say at the front, plainly, that nothing here suggests your giving produces anything. Not gratitude, not a change in anybody, not provision, not return of any kind. That trade is not made on this site and it will not be made in this article.

Hoping for nothing again

Here is the line.

But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again: and your reward shall be great. (Luke 6:35, King James Version)

Hoping for nothing again. That is the phrase and it is worth reading slowly, because it is not saying what people usually hear.

It does not say expect nothing and feel nothing. It does not describe a man who has trained himself past caring. Hoping is not the same as caring.

Hope is a forward thing. It is leaning toward a future event. And what the verse takes out is the leaning.

You have been leaning toward something the verse removes, and the Holy Spirit is the one who chose that word. Luke 6:35 takes out the hoping rather than the caring, and He chose the one that leaves a man's feelings alone.

Now notice what it is aimed at.

Lend, hoping for nothing again. Lending is the most transactional act there is. A loan has a return built into its definition, and He takes the return out of it and asks for it to be done anyway.

That is deliberately the hardest case He could have picked.

You have been given the hardest version of this rather than a gentle one, and it is written about lending rather than about giving, which makes it harder rather than easier. The Spirit of God is the one who picked that example, and He picked it so nobody could say their own case was worse.

And about the reward in that verse, said plainly.

It is God's and it is His business and it has nothing to do with the shelf, or with the people, or with anything changing in your house. Nobody here is telling you that if you keep going, something starts coming back the other way.

You are not owed anything by anybody in that family, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that clean. Scripture puts the reward with God rather than in the hands of the people being given to, and if it is not kept clean the whole thing turns into a slow invoice.

The sour edge is information

Now let me deal with the thing underneath the shame, because it is not what it looks like.

The sour edge is not a moral failure. It is information, and it arrived two years ago for a reason.

Somewhere in the last two years, the giving quietly acquired an expectation. Not a demand. An expectation, which is a much smaller and more ordinary thing, and it grew without any decision from you.

You have an expectation rather than a resentment, and it is written that the hoping is what gets removed rather than the affection. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a man what he has actually accumulated, and an expectation is much easier to put down than a grudge.

And here is how an expectation grows without anybody noticing.

It grows out of time. Eleven years of doing a thing builds a quiet sense that it is now part of an arrangement, and arrangements have two sides by definition, and the mind supplies the second side on its own.

You have been living inside an arrangement nobody ever agreed to, and the Holy Spirit is the one who dismantles an arrangement that was never signed. The written word takes the second side out of a loan, which is where a second side genuinely does belong, and it dismantles easily because nobody built it on purpose.

And one plain thing about the people on the other end.

They are almost certainly not keeping any count either. People who do not send things are usually not tracking that they do not, and there is no ledger anywhere in their house with your name in it.

You are the only one in this holding any record, and it is written that the giving is done hoping for nothing again rather than that anybody is at fault. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what is in the other house, and there is nothing in it about you.

Write it down, and then give again

So here is what to do, and the writing is the part that does the work.

Before you give anything this year, write one sentence down on paper, privately, for nobody.

I am giving this and I expect nothing.

You are able to settle it in writing before it leaves your hands, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a written sentence hold where a thought does not. Luke 6:35 removes the hoping rather than asking anybody to feel differently about it, and a thought on this subject does not hold for a week.

Let me say why writing it matters, because it will feel like a gesture.

An expectation lives in the part of a person that does not use sentences. It runs underneath, and it cannot be argued with, because arguing needs words and it does not use any.

Putting it into a written sentence drags it up into a place where it can be looked at, and most of them do not survive being looked at directly.

You are able to bring it up where it can be seen, and it is written that the lending is done hoping for nothing again rather than that the hoping is talked down. The Spirit of God is the one who does that work through a pen, and He has been doing it through pens for a long time.

And then give it. The same as always.

Do not reduce it to match. Do not skip anybody. Do not give the smaller version as a quiet correction that nobody would ever notice except you.

You are able to give exactly as before, and His word asks for the giving to continue rather than to be adjusted. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man's hand open in the year he most wants to close it slightly.

And afterward, do not check.

Do not notice on the day. Do not notice a week after. When the spring comes and it has plainly not been thought about, say the sentence again and put the kettle on.

You are free the moment you stop checking, and it is written that the reward belongs to God rather than to anything a man can watch for. The Spirit of God is the one who ends a habit of noticing, and He ends it one spring at a time.