Let me tell you a story about a family that gave more than they felt they had to in order to follow Jesus by giving to others. I hope this story at least entertains you, but even more that it challenges you to think about something. Maybe it only causes you to say “good for them”, but even that would make it worth my time to tell you.
I’ll introduce the family to you. Mom and Dad have been married for fourteen years. They both love the Lord. One of the reasons they were initially attracted to one another is that they were both seeking a mate who was seeking Christ. Their desire to follow Jesus shows in many ways, the least of which is their active membership at church.
Dad sells insurance for a living. His company values him for generating a large volume of business. His clients trust him because he is honest and pleasant to deal with. Dad is good at his job.
Mom is a dentist. The hygienists and receptionists who work in her office think that she is a good boss. She is fair, generous, and her patients come back repeatedly because they don’t know of any other dentistry office where the experience is so painless.
Even with their careers, both parents are highly present in the lives of their 12 year-old son and 8 year-old daughter. Mom drops the kids off at school every morning and most nights is home in time to cook dinner. Dad coaches Little League teams, and has been known to pitch in with a science project or two.
A few years before our story begins, the family moved to a new neighborhood in order to live closer to work, thus losing less family time traveling to and from work. Their new house is beautiful – two stories with an open downstairs. It’s a great house for hosting big groups of people. They’ve only been there for three years, but already groups from church, kids’ friends from school, co-workers, and family gatherings have enjoyed the hospitality of the new house.
One night, as Dad was tucking in his little girl, they discussed the things on her mind when a concerned look came over the 8 year-old’s face. “Daddy? Why do we pay somebody to clean our house?”
“Well, Sweetie, God has blessed us with this wonderful house we have, and we have a responsibility to take good care of it. Part of taking care of it means making sure it is kept clean, so we pay somebody to come in and clean it.”
Normally these explanations would be sealed up with “Okay Daddy”, but the girl just looked even more perplexed and said, “I just don’t think that’s how God wants us to spend our money.”
Taken aback by the thoughtfulness of his child, the Dad later repeated the conversation to his wife. As parents, this couple had been prayerful and deliberate in raising their children to be followers of Christ. As they prayed that night, they thanked God that their little girl was giving thought to stewardship and that she felt comfortable talking to her parents about things she wanted to understand.
The Mom and Dad had carefully weighed the decision when they first hired the maid service. Between the two of them, they had no doubts that it was a worthwhile expense. Balancing careers, kids’ activities, and their commitments at church, having the housework taken care of allowed enabled them to be more giving to others.
The next night, Mom takes a turn tucking in their little girl. She explains to her daughter why they pay to have the house cleaned. Neither parent was prepared for the response their daughter would give. “If we bought more house than we can take care of, then maybe we bought more house than God wanted us to have.”
Time out. At this point, the parents have multiple options as far as what is “the right thing to do.” They can sit down with their daughter and gently explain to her that even though she doesn’t understand all of their decisions, she does not need to burden herself with the family budget. Grown-ups will take care of that. This would certainly not be wrong or dishonest. But thank goodness this isn’t where their thinking stopped. They made a commitment when their son was born that they would make every effort to raise their children to follow Christ. What if their daughter learned the wrong lesson from this? What if their daughter got the impression that there are some things you just can’t change even if the teaching of God seems to challenge your decisions? Their greatest consideration was for this girl, and soon-to-be woman, to learn that when you feel the teachings of God and Jesus compel you to go somewhere, you say ‘yes!’ Their daughter is only 8, so there are many things she cannot do without her parents’ help, but in the future when she feels lead to challenge herself to live more like Christ, they want her to remember that her parents always supported her in saying ‘yes!’
Two nights later the four of them sat down as a family and discussed their plan. The family could discontinue the cleaning service. For three years they had paid $40/week, so they would be saving about $160/month. In the spring and summer, a lawn man was paid $35/week to cut the grass. This would require everyone’s contribution. The maid had been hired to solve a real problem – there is more housework to be done than Mom and Dad can do.
A list of tasks was compiled of things that the four of them would now have to do routinely because they still had responsibility to God to take good care of the home he had allowed them to have. Each was assigned according to his/her ability with the understanding that from time to time someone would be unable to complete his/her work and the rest of the family would have to work extra and carry the load.
The plan was not always easy. The 8 year-old has since grown into a teenager. On occasion she comes home unhappy from a bad day at school; she wants to go in her room and be left alone all day, but is not allowed to do so because she must vacuum the downstairs and clean her bathroom. The dad soon found that he seldom took off early in the afternoon to play golf because he took those afternoons off early in order to mow the yard and still make it to his son’s baseball game.
Despite the momentary aggravation, the family felt a satisfying joy that the parents could have never imagined imparting on their children any other way. Because all four of them contributed according to his/her ability, all four had a say in how the $160 was used each month. The family discussed openly their ideas and wishes as to how to give the money to the Lord. Each was heard and appreciated regardless of age and gender. They used some of the money in ways that we typically think of when we say “giving money to the Lord” such as church collections. But they also stretched their boundaries of what they viewed as giving to the Lord. A teammate of the son’s would have had to play the entire season in his old pair of sneakers, but was given brand new cleats and felt the joy of being suited out like all the other team members. One of dad’s clients lost his job one year in the month of May. As a gesture of kindness, this house-cleaning family paid the man’s electric bills during two months of summer heat.
The lessons in this story are subtle. If the message were “house keeping is a duty and hiring a maid is extravagant” then I would not have taken the time to type it. Perhaps someday when this Mom and Dad are older empty nesters they will again pay for these things to be done. The point is that their daughter felt a need to give more and they withheld nothing to affirm and facilitate that.
You might be somebody who says, “I really cannot give up my housekeeper.” That’s fine. The Bible never says, “Thou shalt not pay anyone to clean thy house”. It is possible that relieving yourself of house cleaning gets you out of the house to serve others in invaluable ways, or that the money you pay your housekeeper keeps his/her children fed.
You might be like me and say, “I certainly don’t make as much money as my insurance agent or my dentist. Of course if I had as much money as people like that I would give it away instead of spending on myself.” If I sit here, then I’ve missed the point. My apartment may be two rooms instead of ten, but I can still echo their sentiment that God has given me a nice place to live and I have a responsibility to take care of it.
When God asks us to give more – more money, more time, more thought, more prayer, more energy, more of any of our resources – what are the things we’re stuck to that would prevent us from saying ‘yes!’?
