It Cost Me Something

Rosalind gave it in April and she has been searching her own heart about it since roughly the second week of May, which is when it started to hurt.

Not emotionally. Practically. April was a decision and May was a consequence, and by June there were two things she had to say no to that she had never in her life had to say no to before, and a small ordinary humiliation in a shop that she is not going to describe to anybody.

The gift itself was straightforward. A young woman in her church had a situation, and Rosalind knew about it because Rosalind is who people tell, and there was no fund and no committee and no time, and Rosalind had it.

She did it in a way that meant the girl would never know it was her. That part matters to what came next.

Because from about the second week of May, when it began to be uncomfortable, Rosalind started looking for the catch in herself.

Did she do it to be the kind of woman who does that. Did she do it because she likes being the one who is told things. Was there something in it about her own daughter, who she does not talk about. Is the discomfort now a sign that she gave out of her own strength rather than out of God, because a thing done in God would not hurt like this.

She has taken that last question to prayer probably forty times and has never once come away settled.

What got her was the young woman herself, who does not know and will never know, standing up in a meeting in July to say thank you generally to God and to whoever it was, and who said, and then sat down quickly because she was crying: I don't know who it was. But somebody was out of pocket for me. Somebody was actually out of pocket for me.

Somebody was actually out of pocket for me.

Rosalind sat in a row of chairs and had to keep her face completely still, and she could not have explained it to a single person in that room.

And the sentence that arrived, sitting there, had nothing to do with her own motives.

She thought: I have spent three months treating the cost as evidence against me, and that girl just called it the whole point.

Say the word right, before anything else

I want to be plain about what wealth means on this site, because the word is slippery and I would rather be clear than clever with a woman sitting very still in a row of chairs.

Wealth here means a portion. Not a balance, not what is left in June, not the two things she had to say no to. A portion is the old table word for what is set down in front of somebody because they belong at that table, and Scripture takes that ordinary word and does something outrageous with it: God says of certain people that He Himself is their portion. That is the only sense the word carries here.

And here is the paragraph that matters most, said plainly. There is no ask on this page. Nothing here suggests you give anything to anybody, there is no link and no cause anywhere in it, and this site will never once tell you that giving produces a return, in any form, however carefully it is put. That wire does not exist here and it never will. You did something in April. That is between you and that girl and God, and this article has one interest in it: the search you have been running on yourself since May. I would rather the word of God looked at that search, with the Holy Spirit doing the work, than that I guessed at it.

A king who refused a free gift

There is a short exchange at the end of Second Samuel where a man tries to give David everything he needs for nothing, and David will not have it, and his reason is one sentence long.

But the king said to Araunah, No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.2 Samuel 24:24

Araunah was not being manipulative. He was being generous. He offered the threshing floor and the oxen and the wood, freely, to his king, and it was a real offer.

And David says no, and the reason he gives is not about propriety or about appearances. It is about the nature of the thing he is bringing.

I will not offer to the LORD my God that which cost me nothing.

Read what that says about cost. Not that cost earns anything. Not that expensive offerings work better, which is precisely the lie this whole site exists to refuse. It says that cost is what makes an offering an offering rather than a gesture, and that David, who could have had it free, wanted the thing he brought to be actually his.

So the ache in June is not a symptom. It is the difference between what you did and a nice thought about doing it.

You are not a woman with a hidden motive. You are somebody who has been treating a genuine cost as a clue to be investigated, because nobody ever told you that a cost is simply what a real gift feels like afterward. The written word does not scold anybody for that, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes the difference between agreeing with a verse about David and calling off a three month search.

And here is what is true of you today, before one thing about June is easier. You are provided for and your hands are open. His word says a king refused an offering that cost him nothing, present tense on the page, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a settled thing in a body rather than an interesting story about a threshing floor.

What the search was actually for

Think about what got you in that row. It wasn't the thanks. You went to some trouble not to be thanked.

It was: somebody was actually out of pocket for me. It was the cost named as the point by the only person entitled to name it. You were starving to hear that the hurt was not a fault in the giving, and you still are, and the written word treats that hunger as reasonable rather than as fishing, and it is the Holy Spirit who says so to a person and not merely about them.

That is the honest thing under the three months. You were not looking for a hidden motive because you suspected one. You were looking because it hurt, and you were taught somewhere, without anybody ever saying it out loud, that a thing done in God arrives without a bill.

Here is what the word has already settled about you, so that His Spirit can settle it in you tonight. The cost is not the case against you. Jesus described the whole of His own giving in the language of laying something down, which is a phrase about weight and not about ease, and He was in that row of chairs while you were keeping your face still.