I Have Been Giving Upward For Years

You noticed it at a thing in October and you have not been able to unnotice it since.

You had been there about two hours. You had asked four people about their work, their houses, their children, the trip one of them took in the summer. Real questions, and you listened to all four answers.

And on the way home you worked out that nobody had asked you anything.

Not one question. Not what have you been doing, not how is your year, not one thing about the actual contents of your life.

And it was not the first time. That is what got you. Once you had seen it you could look backward and see the same shape at almost everything for about four years.

You give to those people. Carefully, every year, with real thought. And a phrase arrived on that drive home that you have been trying to get rid of since, which is that you have been behaving like staff.

There is a verse in James about the sorting of people, and it is more useful here than it first looks.

With respect of persons

Here it is.

My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. (James 2:1, King James Version)

Respect of persons is a specific phrase and it does not mean respecting people.

It means sorting them. Assigning weight by standing. Deciding, usually without noticing, that one person's regard is worth more than another's and behaving accordingly.

You have been on the receiving end of a sorting, and James 2:1 names respect of persons as a thing that happens to people rather than as a feeling anybody chooses. The Holy Spirit is the one who put a name on it, and having a name for it is what stops it being a private suspicion.

Now look at where James puts it.

He does not put it in a list of social manners. He puts it directly against the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. He is saying the two cannot be held at the same time.

That is a very large claim to make about something as ordinary as who gets asked questions at a gathering.

You are not being oversensitive about something small, and it is written that respect of persons cannot be held alongside the faith rather than that it is a minor discourtesy. The Spirit of God is the one who weighed it that heavily, and He weighed it that way on behalf of the people it lands on.

And notice the title he chooses in the middle of it.

The Lord of glory. Of all the names available, he picks the one about status, in a sentence about status. Whatever standing exists in any room, it has already been settled by somebody who has all of it and did not sort anybody.

You are held by somebody who has never once weighed you by a room, and the written word sets the Lord of glory directly against the sorting of persons. The Holy Spirit is the one who chose that title for that sentence, and He chose it to end the ranking.

What being unasked does

Now let me say what four years of that actually does, because it has been getting treated as a small thing and it is not.

To be asked a question is to be treated as a person with contents. To be asked none, repeatedly, over years, is to be quietly reclassified as a function.

And here is the part that is hardest to see from inside it. Nobody in that room decided to do that. Respect of persons almost never announces itself. It runs underneath, in who gets turned toward and who does not, and the people doing it would be genuinely upset to have it described.

You have not been despised by anybody, and it is written that the sorting is a thing the faith cannot be held with rather than a cruelty anybody performs deliberately. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman name a real wound without having to make anybody a villain.

And there is a second thing, and it is the one that will help you most, so let me say it carefully.

The sorting got into you as well.

Four years of giving upward, with real care every time, to people whose regard weighed more. And somewhere in there, other people, with less, got the smaller version of your attention, because that is what a ranking does once it is running.

You have been carrying a sorting that was done to you first, and His word forbids the ranking in every direction rather than only downward. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman that without any accusation, and there is none in it, because it was handed to you before you ever ran it.

And here is why that is the good news rather than the bad.

The part of this you cannot fix is what those people do at a gathering. The part you can is where your own attention goes, and that is entirely in your hands and available this week.

You have something to do about this today, and it is written that the faith of the Lord of glory is not held with respect of persons. The Spirit of God is the one who hands a woman back the half of a situation that is actually hers.

Give across, and keep going up

So here is what to do, and it is an addition rather than a withdrawal.

Do not stop giving to those people. That would be the ranking running in reverse, and it would cost you a set of relationships to make a point that nobody would ever hear.

Keep giving upward exactly as you have been. And this year, give with the same care to somebody the ranking has been quietly putting below you.

You are able to give the same quality in both directions, and James 2:1 forbids the sorting rather than one particular direction of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who levels a person's attention, and He levels it by adding rather than by subtracting.

And here is how to know you have actually done it.

The thing you give downward should cost you the same amount of thought. Not money. Thought. The same walking around with somebody in your head, the same noticing, the same care about getting it right.

If it is quicker, the ranking is still running.

You are able to measure this honestly, and it is written that the faith cannot be held with respect of persons rather than that the sorting can be softened. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an honest measure available, and this one takes about ten seconds to apply.

And the second half, which is about the questions.

Ask somebody a question this week and then, in that same conversation, say one true thing about your own year without being asked for it.

Not a complaint. Not a hint. One ordinary sentence about what has actually been happening to you, offered into the room the way anybody else offers theirs.

You are allowed to put yourself into a conversation, and Scripture sets the Lord of glory against every ranking rather than asking anybody to wait to be invited. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a woman permission to be a person with contents in a room, and the permission was never anybody else's to grant.