Strings-free Kindness

Strings-Free Kindness

If you help the poor, you are lending to the LORD—and he will repay you!

Proverbs 19:17

My friend Jen had always prided herself on being the person who gives to others, so she struggled when she suddenly found herself in a place of needing to receive. Her life circumstances had shifted, and she was finding it difficult to pay her bills. A friend encouraged Jen to contact a local church where this friend’s father was on the committee overseeing a giving fund and to ask for help.

Setting aside her pride, Jen contacted the church. The committee told her they would help, but only if she started attending their church—despite the fact that she had a church home elsewhere and was clearly a believer.

As Jen relayed the story to me, I winced.

While we should be good stewards of resources, I’ve become extremely wary of the strings people attach to kindness, and I often wonder whether the manipulation does greater harm to the Kingdom of God than the intended kindness does good to the recipient.

My small church has a giving fund that is disproportionately large for the size of our congregation—landing somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of our weekly tithes and offerings. This fund is strictly no strings attached. We serve (both financially and with physical labor on projects) the local community: people from our church, people from other churches, people from no church. We ask for nothing in return and simply point to the love Christ showed when he walked this earth as our example.

Have we been taken advantage of? I’m sure we have. But the vast majority of gifts we give are received with overflowing gratitude, and we find ourselves having the most amazing conversations with astonished recipients when we give with no strings attached, conversations that we pray change lives in eternal ways.

Although others have warned us that such a radical approach will result in a bankrupt giving account, our fund grows faster than we can give it away. God multiplies what we freely give, and it has surprised us all. When we help others financially, we are “lending to the Lord.” He has certainly repaid our small church both financially and in other blessings.

—Julie

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

Have you attached strings to your kindness in the past? Find someone you can bless without expectation of repayment.