our giver
Riley hears us on the stairs, the push-pull comedy of Kevin and me moving a desk up to the room from which Kevin now works most of the week. She hears her dad pouring out his strength; hears me straining to lift when the desk snags the edge of a step; hears both of us exhale hard. Kevin calls for Adam, hoping to harness some of that teenager brawn Adam hardly knows he has, but Riley appears at the top of the stairs first.
“Do you need help?” She asks, the vowels open, the consonants crisp. Our giver, Riley lives to help. God so loved that he gave (John 3:16). I glance back to where she stands. Riley so loves that she gives; she possesses and draws from a seemingly endless supply of energy for assists. There are different kinds of service, but all serve the same Lord (1 Corinthians 12:5), and servanthood tithes the self.
“Yes,” I say, readily, just as Adam squeezes his way down the stairs to stand beside Kevin. The project looks obvious; I see Adam, sharp-eyed, assessing the situation as he moves.
“I need you to help me push,” Kevin says to Adam, who responds only with the lifting of his hands, a subtle twist of his wrists toward the desk.
Riley stands at the top of the stairs, patiently waiting for instructions. I look back over my shoulder, watching her brassy hair swing about her shoulders in loose curls. “Once the desk is up, you can help me move some things,” I tell her.
“Mmmhmm,” she says easily, then turns her attention to her dad and her brother. “Dad, Adam, you’ve got this,” she says with clear enthusiasm, instinctively knowing that the words themselves convey her strength. What we can’t touch with our hands — whom we can’t touch with our hands — we can lift with our words. I smile, loving her for the way she transitions from one gift to another, marveling because the step comes not so naturally for many of the rest of us. Could it be that we feel motivated by something other than the giving itself? But Riley finds another way: It’s not my time to do, so it must be my time to encourage.
Kevin pushes the desk from the bottom, using the strength of his legs, but, new to this sort of thing and knowing no better, Adam tries lifting it. The desk top slips from Adam’s long, thin fingers. “Use your legs,” Kevin says. “Push from the bottom. Look.” The familiarity of the moment makes me sigh. How many times has God said that to me? Look. Watch me. Without casting a glance toward his dad, Adam reaches again toward the top of the desk. I can’t decide if he doesn’t understand the words–push, look, or if he doesn’t understand them today, or if, thinking he knows already, he has chosen not to listen. Regardless, I recognize in my son something I know personally, a risky impatience with the process, both the giving and the learning how. If he continues this way, not only will he expend more effort than necessary, but he could hurt himself. Adam grunts, willing the desk up, the task done. Watching him, I think of my own countless, hurried seasons without hearing or comprehension; and I whisper a prayer, because God gives eyes to see and ears to hear (Proverbs 20:12).
“Adam.” Kevin’s tone is even, patient, calm, his voice a father’s voice, like my own Father’s voice when he draws my attention and calls me to stillness.
Observing our many failures, God urges us to watch and imitate. More than telling us, in the life of Christ He has shown us what to do. But the metaphor falls short, because even more, God has become our life, our energy, the strength within us to obey. If Kevin could pour his own strength now into Adam; if he could surge by sheer will past the limitations of Adam’s body and mind; if Adam had only to agree, to come down the steps as He did and make the sacrifice of self, the comparison would be complete.
“You got this, you got this,” Riley encourages again, as the young man and the older one crouch before their work, and I turn my eyes again to the stairs, watching for potential hangups. I smile, scrambling backwards, feeling the fullness of Riley’s devotion, knowing she will stand at my elbow or follow me the rest of the day, for as long as she knows I need her help. “How can I help,” she’ll ask over and over without reservation or reluctance, as we finish one task and start another. She’ll withhold nothing from me or from our work together–no energy, no time, no effort. And although she lives her life by lists, for me, she’ll let go of everything she had in mind to do without expecting to return to it. She’ll not complain or challenge my instructions. She’ll not refuse me any kind of service or balk at any request, no matter how big or how small. And by her given life, God underlines threads of His conversation with me about what it means to serve and follow.
Are the first fruits of our energy any less valuable a resource? Or isn’t the gift of your own self the perfect way to imitate our Father’s action, the bend of his body to earth? “Give, and you will receive,” Word says. “Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap (Luke 6:38).” Or, “I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in (Malachi 3:10)!” Loaves and fish or the administrations of grace, the strength of our bodies or life-giving words, in the Kingdom economy, what we give God multiplies–life unto more life, glory unto more glory, thanks unto more thanks, forgiveness unto more forgiveness, grace unto more and more grace. This is the belt of Truth about my waist, holding me together: Even when I can’t imagine how a sacrifice could ever be the means for something new, God’s love makes it so. Jesus, the forever amen of heaven and earth, makes it so.
“Awww,” Adam says, relenting, and behind me Riley giggles, and I catch her joy and laugh out loud.
God loves a person who gives cheerfully (2 Corinthians 9:7), with hilarity, the word really means, and oh, I do too. That kind of giving is contagious.
