Nobody Says Thank-you For Playing Fair in America.
Around the time I started work in Naperville last summer, one of the other interns wrecked his car. Someone in the church heard about it and donated one to him. (Apparently this was not an entirely unheard-of thing to have heppen. It’s a big church and there are some pretty wealthy people in Naperville.) It was, in fact, a nicer car (though used and fairly old) than the one he had had before and wrecked. And, well, he bragged about it a bit.
This upset some of the other interns. You see, I didn’t have a car at the time either, and they thought the donated car should have gone to me. They said that I “deserved it more.”
I hope nobody thought I held the same opinion. I was nothing but happy for the other intern. The thing is, none of us really deserve anything when it comes right down to it. And to see someone be so generous, and to see someone else so assisted by that person’s generosity, can be nothing but a blessing to other Christians if seen in a true light.
If I could change anything about that situation it would be that we all knew who the donor was; I think everyone would have been more blessed if it had been a secret. But maybe I’m too much of an idealist.
If one knows to whom they are indebted then they can say thank-you and be done with it. If one does not know, then one ought to behave towards all of their fellow men as though they are indebted to them. And God will recognize and reward the one who did perform the generous act. That is how everyone is blessed by acts of secret charity. That is what is meant when Christ talks in the Bible about not letting your left hand know what your right is doing, for if men know the cituous things you do you have been rewarded in full, but if it known only to God your reward will be in heaven.
But that is the ideal. It is more difficult to treat all mankind as if you must repay them generosity for their generosity, because it is not concrete. It is far easier to repay one known benefactor. And my fellow interns had difficulty doing even that, because somewhere in their minds they had the underlying assumption that any of us was worthy enough to deserve anything at all.
How much more beautiful is the world, how much richer and more joyful, if one treasures every experience as a gift! This is how I could derive so much joy and see so much beauty from someone else receiving a wonderful present. It is a picture of God’s gift of life and salvation to all of us.
Perhaps in another country or another era, where people have had to do without, all of this is clearer.
