The Generous Soul

What does giving actually cost you?

There is arithmetic that runs at the back of your head whenever somebody asks for help. The hours, the money, the Saturday, totted up, and the answer comes back short.

Proverbs 11 keeps a different set of books, and the chapter puts three of them in a row. Verse twenty-four: There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. Verse twenty-five, yours: The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself. Verse twenty-six: He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it. Three consecutive proverbs pressing the same charge against the arithmetic, and the third has an actual grain market in it, which keeps the whole thing from floating off into the vaguely spiritual.

Scattereth is a sowing word. Made fat is the language of a well-fed animal, physical and unembarrassed. And he that watereth shall be watered is passive at the end: he does not water himself. Somebody else does it to him.

This is not a technique for getting rich, and reading it that way has done real damage to real people. It is a description of how the soul was built. What is clutched shrinks in the hand. What is poured out comes back through channels you did not dig and cannot trace.

So here is an invitation with no obligation in it. One name off the list of people who need something from you. The money, if you have it. The Saturday morning. The call you keep sliding into next week. You are welcome to find out whether the arithmetic is wrong.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 236 is He Stood and Cried (John 7:37).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna