My brother is four years older and a good bit larger than me. He was in charge when we worked on projects together. Whether we were working construction, cleaning out a barn, or building fences...Larry was the boss. This became especially precarious when my dad assigned us to put up some barbed wire fencing. This required using a sledge hammer to pound the steel posts into the ground.So here's the picture: The head of the post is about 1 inch wide. One of us holds the post steady while the other one swings a huge sledge hammer down on the post to drive it into the ground.
Hmmmmmm. I wonder which one of us is going to hold the post while the other one swings the hammer? You can imagine how freaked out I was holding those posts? Every time that sledge hammer slammed into the top of the post with a massive **CLANG** the post would vibrate and make my whole body quake. He would tell me (and sometimes yell at me) "Hold the post still!!" I was thinking, "Ya, that’s easy for YOU to say...you’re the one swinging that huge hammer. But what if you miss? With one missed bone-crushing swing, you could obliterate my hands!"
Larry and I drove hundreds of fence posts during those years at home. Larry did most of the hammer swinging and I did most of the post-holding. I developed a lot of trust for his ability to swing that hammer, and I got better at holding the post steady.
Here is what made that job so challenging, and makes that memory relevant to our 40-Day Journey Toward a Life of Active Compassion:
The post-holding hands could not control the hammer-swinging hands. When I am driving a small nail with a hand-held hammer, my left hand (holding the nail) knows what my right hand (swinging the hammer) is doing. My brain is in control of both hands.
But when Larry and I were driving those tall fence posts into the ground, his brain controlled the hands that swung the hammer and my brain controlled the hands that held the pole. Simply put, it required trust...NOT control...for the two hands to work together.
In our 40-Day Journey entry for Day 14, Sheree writes:
I love it that Jesus takes for granted that His disciples will generously give to the needy. Twice in Matthew 6:1-4, He says "when you give to the needy;" He does not say "if you give to the needy." Generosity and righteousness are inseparable in this section of scripture...The question is not so much what our hand is doing but what our heart is thinking while the hand is doing it.This means that there are parts of giving to others that we can control, and there are parts of the process that require complete trust. If we are determined to give in such a way that all the glory and praise go to God, then we will have to let go of how someone else responds. In the name of Jesus, we must accept that we may not be understood, appreciated, remembered, or even noticed. Our generosity must be rooted in our commitment to righteousness.
In fact, our pursuit of righteous living may be tested by our generosity. When you try to help someone and they do not respond favorably, we might be tempted to be angry with them, or feel like taking back our offer. But Jesus shows the way to handle this in his teachings and example. We are called to give and let God take care of everything else. We simply give and serve and then let God be in control of affirming and rewarding us (Matthew 6:1-4). We must resist trying to control both "hands" of the giving process. We give, and let Him take care of everything else.
- Don McLaughlin
