I Stopped Giving To My Brother Years Ago

It was a reasonable decision and you made it on your own.

He has everything. Anything you produce is going to look thin next to what is already in that house. You could not think of a single thing that would not be slightly embarrassing for both of you.

So you stopped. Not dramatically. You just did not, one year, and nothing happened, and then you did not the next year either.

And it has been six or seven years now.

Here is the part you did not expect. The stopping did not stay where you put it.

Something has grown in that space. You call less. He calls less. Conversations at family things are shorter than they were and neither of you has ever mentioned it, and if anybody asked you what happened between you and your brother you would say nothing happened, which is precisely accurate and completely misleading.

There is an old scene between two brothers about exactly this, and one of them says the sentence your brother would say.

Take, I pray thee, my blessing

Here is the moment. Jacob has come back after twenty years and he is trying to put something in Esau's hands, and Esau has already refused once.

Take, I pray thee, my blessing that is brought thee; because God hath dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough. And he urged him, and he took it. (Genesis 33:11, King James Version)

Look at what Esau said just before this, because it is the sentence that has been getting imagined for seven years.

I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast. That is a man with plenty, saying kindly and truthfully that he does not need anything, and it is exactly the reception you have been protecting yourself from for seven years.

You have been avoiding a sentence that has already been said out loud in the book, and Genesis 33:11 has the receiving brother say I have enough before the giving happens anyway. The Holy Spirit is the one who left that refusal in the account, and He left it in so nobody would think it was a reason to stop.

Now what Jacob does with it, because he does not accept the refusal.

He urged him. Pressed it on him. Kept it in his hands and did not withdraw it, and the account says plainly that after the urging, he took it.

You are allowed to insist, and it is written that he urged him and he took it rather than that he respected the refusal and went home. The Spirit of God is the one who put the urging in the story, and He put it in because the whole reconciliation ran through it.

And notice what the thing is called.

My blessing that is brought thee. Not a gift and not a payment. A blessing, which in that account is something between two people that carries meaning far past its contents.

Twenty years of silence sat between those brothers. The object was small and the object was not the subject.

You have been thinking about the wrong thing entirely, and Scripture calls it a blessing brought rather than a thing given. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves an object out of the middle of a relationship, and He moves it out by naming what it actually was.

The practical reason was true

Now let me say something honest about your reasoning, because it deserves respect before it gets examined.

Every part of it was true. He does have everything. Anything you produced would have looked thin. There was a real awkwardness available and you correctly identified it.

You were not lying to yourself. You were telling yourself something accurate that happened to leave out the important part.

You have been reasoning correctly about the wrong subject, and it is written that Jacob gave to a brother who had already said I have enough. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a man see the gap between an accurate reason and a sufficient one, and He does it without calling him a liar.

And the important part is this. The giving between two brothers was never about supply.

It was a small recurring act that said, every year, without anybody having to say it out loud: still my brother, and still thought about.

Remove that act and nothing takes its place. Nothing was ever going to take its place, because there is nothing else in a grown man's year that does that job.

You have removed the only sentence the two of you were still saying, and the written word runs an entire reconciliation through a thing pressed into somebody's hands. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what a small annual act was actually carrying, and He shows it before the distance goes any further.

And here is the thing about the distance, said plainly.

It is not resentment. There is no grievance anywhere in it. It is only what grows in a space when nothing is put there, and it grows slowly enough that neither party ever notices a day on which it happened.

You are looking at ordinary drift rather than at a wound, and it is written that after twenty years the urging and the taking were enough. The Spirit of God is the one who closes a gap that nobody meant to open, and He closes it the same way it opened, one small act at a time.

Bring it, and urge him

So here is what to do, and it has two parts because the second one is the part that has been missing.

Bring him something. Small, plain, and chosen because it suits him. Do not attempt to solve the fact that he has everything, because you cannot and it is not the job.

You are able to bring something without it being adequate, and Genesis 33:11 has the giving happen after the receiving brother has already said he has enough. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a small thing carry twenty years, and He has been doing that with small things since the beginning.

And then, if he waves it off, press it on him once.

Not twice. Once. Put it back in his hands and say, take it, and let that be the whole of your argument.

That single act is the thing your brother will remember, and he will remember it long after he has forgotten what was in his hands, because being urged by a brother is not something that happens to a grown man very often.

You have one word available to you that will do more than the object, and it is written that he urged him, and he took it. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a man press something a second time when everything in him wants to withdraw it, and the pressing is the whole event.

And say nothing about the seven years.

Do not explain the gap. Do not apologize for it. Do not say I know I have not for a while. He has almost certainly not been keeping a count, and raising it would turn a small warm act into a conversation about a deficiency.

You are not obliged to account for anything, and His word has Jacob say only take it rather than explain twenty years. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a moment from becoming a discussion, and He does it by giving a man one short sentence.