Nobody Will Ever Know How Long It Took

Ninety hours. Somewhere around there.

You did not count on purpose. You worked it out afterward, roughly, from evenings and weekends and the two afternoons you took off, and the number came out much larger than you expected.

And she will think it took an afternoon.

Not out of any unkindness. She has no way of knowing. Nobody has any way of knowing, because the only place the hours exist is in your own house where nobody was watching.

And you have caught yourself doing something you do not like.

Rehearsing ways to mention it. Not a speech, nothing crass, but a sentence that could be dropped in naturally. Something about the evenings. Something about how long a particular part took.

And you do not know whether that is pride or whether it is something much plainer, and not knowing has been the worst part.

There is a line about giving that hides it even from the person doing it.

Let not thy left hand know

Here it is.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. (Matthew 6:3, King James Version)

That is a very strange instruction and it is worth sitting with rather than rushing past.

He is not saying keep it from other people. He goes further. The left hand and the right hand belong to the same body. He is describing a giving so hidden that the giver's own internal accounting does not get to hold onto it.

You have been asked to hide it from yourself rather than only from the room, and Matthew 6:3 puts the not knowing inside the one person doing it. The Holy Spirit is the one who chose two hands on one body, and the choice is deliberately extreme.

Now why it is put that way, because there is a reason and it is not about modesty.

The moment a thing given is counted, by anybody including the giver, it stops being entirely a gift and becomes partly a record. And a record is a thing that expects to be read at some point.

You have been keeping a record without meaning to, and it is written that the left hand is not to know what the right hand does rather than that nobody should mention it. The Spirit of God is the one who guards a thing from becoming an account, and He guards it by removing the counting.

And a plain word here, because this tenant does not trade in the other thing.

The next verse speaks of the Father who sees in secret. That is about His seeing and His business and nothing else. Nobody here is promising that hidden hours produce anything for you, from Him or from her or from anybody in that room.

You are not being offered a return, and the written word hides the act rather than repricing it. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that clean, and it has to stay clean or the whole thing turns into a transaction with better manners.

The wanting is not pride

Now let me deal with the real question here, because it deserves a straight answer.

Wanting somebody to know how long it took is not pride.

Pride wants to be admired. That is a different appetite and you would recognize it. What you have is smaller and older and much more human: you spent ninety hours somewhere nobody could see, and there is a part of a person that cannot bear to be entirely invisible.

You have an ordinary hunger rather than a fault, and it is written as an instruction about hiding rather than as an accusation against anybody who wants to be seen. The Spirit of God is the one who can tell those two apart, and He has never once confused them in you.

And here is what the verse does with that hunger, which is better than telling you to kill it.

It does not say stop wanting to be seen. It relocates the seeing.

The hours are seen. They are just not seen by her, and the verse is entirely comfortable with that arrangement in a way that a person takes years to become.

You are seen in the part nobody was watching, and His word puts the knowing outside the room rather than nowhere at all. The Holy Spirit is the one who was in the house for all ninety of those hours, and He was there for the ones that went badly as well.

And one plain thing about the sentence you have been rehearsing.

If it comes out, she will say something warm about the hours. And then, for the rest of that thing's life in her house, part of what it says will be ninety hours rather than her.

The mentioning does not add the hours to the gift. It replaces the gift with the hours.

You have been about to trade the thing for the effort, and it is written that the right hand acts and the left hand is not told. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a woman what a sentence would actually cost, and it costs the whole of it.

Let it be unknown

So here is what to do, and it is a decision made before the day rather than a resolve on it.

Decide now that the hours do not get mentioned. Not directly, not in passing, not by anybody else on your behalf.

That last one matters. If somebody in your house knows and would mention it warmly, ask them not to.

You are able to close every route the sentence has, and Matthew 6:3 keeps the doing from even the giver's own hand. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a decision like that hold under pressure, and the pressure comes at the moment of handing over.

And expect the pull right at the end, because that is when it comes.

Not while she is opening it. Just after, in the small gap where she has said something and the conversation has not moved on yet. That gap is where the sentence fits, and it will feel like the most natural thing in the world.

Let the gap pass. Say her name, or say nothing, and let somebody else fill it.

You have one gap to get through and it lasts about three seconds, and it is written that the left hand does not know rather than that the timing must be managed. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a woman through three seconds, and three seconds is the whole of the discipline.

And then do something with the hunger rather than pretending it is not there.

Tell one person. Not her. Somebody outside it entirely, who has nothing to do with the gift and will never see it. Say it took about ninety hours and that it came out well.

That is not vanity. That is a woman being honest with one safe person instead of leaking it into a room where it would change what a thing means.

You have somewhere to put the wanting that costs nothing, and Scripture hides the act from the room rather than hiding the woman from everybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who provides that one safe person, and He has usually provided one already.