Somebody's name came up at a table in May and she felt something move in her chest, and she knew instantly what it was, and she was ashamed of it for the rest of the evening.
She lent that woman a set of folding chairs four years ago. Twelve of them, for a party. They came back a fortnight later, all twelve, clean.
And two years after that she needed chairs herself, and she asked, and the woman said no. She had a reason. It was not even a bad reason.
Four years, and the entry is still open, and it opened itself at a table in May without being asked to.
That is the part she cannot get round. She did not decide to remember it. She would swear on anything that she does not hold grudges and by any normal measure she does not, because she is at that woman's door with a pot of something whenever anything goes wrong in that house, and she means it, and she is not performing.
But there is a ledger.
She could sit down tonight and write it out and it would take an hour and it would be accurate to the week. Who she has helped and what came back. Who has never once asked how she is. The cousin. The two women from the old road. The one who borrowed the good roasting pan and returned it unwashed, which is eleven years ago now and still filed.
She has never told a living soul that this exists. She would rather people knew almost anything else about her.
Lend, hoping for nothing again
Sit down in a folding chair a minute, because there is a line in Luke that goes past the lending entirely and puts its hand on the thing behind it.
But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.Luke 6:35
Do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again.
Read where the weight falls. It is not on the lending. The lending is one word in a list, and you do it constantly and you have done it for thirty years and nobody has ever had to ask you twice. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has had you doing it that long.
It falls on hoping for nothing again.
That is a sentence about the inside of a person while she hands something over. There is an expectation that starts up quietly at the moment of the handover, and it is not a demand and it is never spoken, and it opens a small entry that stays open until something comes back.
Hear this in your own yard. You are not a grudge holding woman, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture aims that clause at the hoping rather than at the lending, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has had you at that door with a pot of something every time trouble comes to that house.
Now let me name what the ledger actually is, because it is not bitterness and bitterness is the wrong word for a woman who lends chairs to somebody who once said no to her.
It is accuracy.
You have an extremely good memory and a strong sense of what is fair, and those two things together will build a ledger whether you authorize one or not. It is not malice. It is arithmetic, running in the background, on a woman who notices everything. The written word does not call that bitterness, and the Spirit of God has never once condemned a woman for noticing.
And the last clause of that verse is the one that will get you, because it does not describe fairness at all: he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
Unthankful. That is the ledger's entire category. Every entry in it is a version of that word, and the verse says outright that God is kind to exactly those people, and it says it without any note of complaint.
Hear this too, and let it land in the yard. You are not being told the entries are false, and Scripture is what says so. What is written never denies that the chairs came back and the favor did not, and the Spirit of God has been kind to the unthankful for the whole four years, and He has been kind to you in the same season and by the same standard.
So this week you lend one thing, and when the entry tries to open you refuse it out loud.
The refusing out loud is the whole instruction, because the entry opens in about a second and a half and it opens under the level where thinking happens, and you cannot argue with something that fast in silence. But you can speak over it, and speaking is slower than it and lands on top of it.
So you hand the thing over. And in the doorway, or in the car, or at the sink twenty minutes later when it fires, you say it out loud: lend, hoping for nothing again. Nothing is owed on this one. I am not writing it down.
Say it every time it opens. Four times a day if that is what it takes.
The written word puts the weight on the hoping rather than the lending and finishes by saying He is kind unto the unthankful, and the Holy Spirit has had you at that woman's door with a pot every time anything went wrong there, so nothing about the ledger makes your kindness a performance.
And the old entries. The chairs, the roasting pan, the cousin, the two from the old road.
You do not have to work through them tonight and this article is not going to hand you a project. But every one of them is filed under a word that appears in that verse, and it appears there as a description of the people God is kind to, and you are asking Him to be kind to you out of exactly the same clause. That is written, and the Holy Spirit has been kind to you out of it every day of those four years.
Declare this over yourself
Say these in the yard where the chairs are stacked. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit has had you at that door with a pot according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of what came back. Whether that woman ever says one word about the chairs or never does, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a woman who lends to people who once said no to her.
- Ledger that opens itself every time I hand something over, you are not memory and you are closing today. Scripture says lend, hoping for nothing again, and the weight of that line falls on the hoping and not on the lending at all.
- Entry that opened at a table in May without being asked to, get out of this yard, in the name of Jesus. The written word says He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil, and the Spirit of God has been kind to me out of that same clause for four years running.
- Lord, You never denied that the chairs came back and the favor did not, and Your Spirit has had me at that woman's door with a pot every time, exactly as it is written. I am lending one thing this week, and the first time the entry opens I am saying nothing is owed on this one out loud.
Luke 6:35
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