Hands Open/Hands Closed (Giving II)

Perhaps we can see the invitation to Biblical faith most clearly in the invitation to give. We are told to give, even if we don’t feel like it.[1] We are to bless others with our money, even if some part of us fears that there might not be enough left over.[2] Since we are talking about taking action with our bodies, here’s a little body exercise: Pause for a moment and open your hands, palms up. Feel what that posture invites. Can you feel it calling you to an attitude of openness? Of trust? Of awe and wonder and curiosity? Now clinch your fist as tight as you can. What does that feel like? What does it invite you into? Into defensiveness? Into anger? Into self-protection?

Just this morning, I went to the Long Beach Antique Market with a good friend. We actually got up at 5:30 AM so that we were there when the gates opened. Miracles do happen. My friend found a beautiful table at a very good price, but after walking to the ATM and getting money out, she decided that she didn’t want the table after all. This put her in the awkward position of going back to the vendors and telling them that she had changed her mind. I watched from a distance as she walked back to the older man and woman who were standing there selling their furniture, engaged them in conversation, and then reached into her wallet and handed them a string of twenty dollar bills and told them that she would come back for the table. When I asked what had changed her mind, she said that she'd really liked the couple and that she wanted them to have a sale. But an hour later when it was time to leave and I asked her about picking up the table, she said, “You know, I think I’m going to let it go.” I tilted my head to the side, puzzled. “I really liked that couple,” she said, “but I don’t need the table, not really.”

I know my friend and I know her generosity. I know that she is so very in tune with God’s Spirit that I could guess, without embarrassing her into telling me, that she had felt great compassion for this couple, and that she probably felt they needed the money. And then I reflected on how I relate to money very differently. My friend tends to relate with her hands always open, and I tend to relate with a much tighter fist. Perhaps it’s because my friend is a bit older and in a different financial situation, or perhaps it’s because she’s known what it’s like to be truly poor. But I also know that it’s more than that: she has trained herself into a life of open-handedness. Of generosity. Of giving her listening and her time and her heart to so many people that it has become a way of life. Because God has consistently taught me to refrain from judging myself, I am free from having to compare myself to her. But I am challenged. I am inspired. I am humbled by the generosity I see in my friend, because I see and experience Jesus in and through it.

Hands open and hands closed represent two postures we can embody. Hands open is the very posture Scripture continually invites us into. Indeed, the Scripture even compares hard-heartedness with tight-fistedness and then tells us to live with open hands![3] The goal is that by training our bodies to live into a certain posture, the rest of us will follow. By training our bodies, I mean taking action in the real world, beyond the conceptual world that exists in our minds. This is so different from just trying to think our way into a new way of behaving. “It is more blessed to give than to receive” no doubt in part because, in giving, our very hearts become opened, not only to God and others, but also to our own selves.[4] In giving, we become open doors, able to welcome the love and generosity of God.

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1] E.g., Luke 17:4.

[2] Though the inspired Scriptural imagery constantly paints the picture that a life of giving leads to a life of more than enough. Think, for instance, of the twelve baskets of food left over from five pieces of bread and two sardines (Matthew 14:13-21).

[3] See Deuteronomy 15:7-11.

[4] Acts 20:35.