The Dish She Never Got Back

The fourth dish is in her hands on the front step and she has not knocked yet.

It is the good one, which is the mistake she made in February and has repeated three times since. The other one has a chip and would have been sensible.

Four times.

February, when it happened. March, when everybody else had stopped. May, for no reason except that she had made too much. And now.

Nothing back. Not one thing. Not a message, not a word at church, not a nod in the parking lot. The dishes have not come back either, which is a smaller thing and which she notices, and she is ashamed of noticing.

And there is a thought that has arrived in the last two weeks and she does not like it at all, which is: what am I doing.

Not: what a rude woman. She would not think that and she knows enough about February to know that a person can be underneath something so far that a doorstep does not register.

It is worse than that. It is: I do not know any more whether I am serving somebody or waiting for something.

Because if she were serving somebody, would she be counting? And she is counting. She could tell you it is the fourth one without pausing.

If you have taken something to a house four times and heard nothing, you know that step. And you know the question that arrives on about the fourth one, which is not about them at all.

The word, and a sentence with no return in it

Let me stand on the step and say the plain thing before you knock.

The problem is not the silence. You understand the silence better than most people would and you have never once been offended by it.

The problem is that you have caught yourself counting, and counting looks to you like evidence about your motive, and you have been quietly prosecuting yourself with it for two weeks.

So let me put the word straight first.

Blessed does not mean the dish coming back. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking. It was on you in February with the good dish and it is on you now with the same one.

Now the verse, and I want you to notice what is not in it.

But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.Hebrews 13:16

To do good and to communicate. That old word communicate means to share, to give a portion of what you have to somebody.

And then: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.

That is the entire verse. Do good, share, and God is pleased with it.

There is no return in that sentence. There is no clause about it coming back to you, no promise about your own need being met, no suggestion that the household will respond. The verse ends with God being pleased and it stops.

You are doing something that a verse describes and completes without a single return in it. Hebrews 13:16 ends on God being well pleased rather than on anything coming back, and it is the Holy Spirit who is described as bearing goodness as fruit in a person, which means what has taken you to that door four times has an author.

About the counting

Now the counting, because it is the actual thing on that step and it deserves a straight answer rather than a comfort.

You are counting, and counting is not what you are afraid it is.

Here is the difference and it is the whole thing. A person keeping score wants the number to be noticed. A person paying attention keeps a number because a number is information.

Ask yourself, honestly, what you would do if she opened the door right now and said thank you for the four dishes. And you know exactly what you would do, because you have been to enough doors: you would be mortified and you would say something dismissive and you would leave slightly too quickly.

A woman keeping score does not do that. A woman keeping score stays for the sentence.

You are counting the way a person counts steps rather than the way a person keeps an account. Scripture never once forbids a person from knowing what they have done, and it is the Holy Spirit who convicts about actual motive rather than manufacturing a general case, which is why the two weeks of prosecuting yourself has produced no evidence.

And here is the other half of it, which is more useful.

Four times with nothing back is genuinely tiring. Not spiritually. Actually. It takes something out of a person to walk up a path and not know whether the thing on it landed, and doing it four times without any information is harder than doing it four times with a thank you, and that is not a fault in you, it is arithmetic about human beings.

So you are tired, and you have been reading tiredness as a bad motive, and those are not the same thing at all.

You are tired rather than mercenary, and one of those is a fact about a body and the other one is a charge with no evidence. Hebrews 13:16 says forget not, which is a phrase you say to people who are finding it hard rather than to people who are enjoying it, and it is His Spirit who supplies the doing rather than requiring a person to generate the energy for it.

What I will not tell you about that house

Now the house, plainly.

I am not going to tell you she is grateful. She may be. She may not have registered a single one of the four, and that is a real possibility and it deserves saying out loud rather than being left as a thing you hope.

And I am not going to tell you it comes back to you. It does not. There is no return on this and no offset and nothing is being credited anywhere, and if it were, this would be a transaction with a longer settlement period, and it would not be the thing you think you are doing.

And I am not going to tell you to keep going. That is yours. Four is a real number and there is a point at which a person is doing something that is no longer reaching anybody, and knowing when is wisdom rather than failure.

What I will tell you is that the verse ends where it ends. God is well pleased. That is the whole outcome named in the text and there is nothing after it.

You have an outcome named in that verse and it is God being pleased, and there is no second clause. Hebrews 13:16 stops there, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with your spirit rather than a household doing it, which is why nothing that has or has not happened on that doorstep has changed what the verse says.

And take the chipped one next time. You will feel better about it, and it is a real practical thing, and there is no spiritual meaning in it whatsoever.