Parable 1 - Left and Right

A teacher at a small school and her husband paid their bills month to month. Even though they were just barely surviving, they did have some small amount of savings.

One day, this teacher noticed that one of the other teachers at her school had broken her glasses. She had carefully glued them back together and wrapped a little tape around the center of the nose piece to keep the two portions of the glasses from coming apart. That teacher also had patches on the elbows of her sweater. She occasionally mentioned that it was difficult to keep up with the medical bills that she and her husband were faced with.

The woman teacher and her husband decided to make a financial gift so that the other teacher would be able to buy a new pair of glasses. But they knew this other teacher would never accept charity, so they put the money in an envelope with an unsigned note and left it in her mailbox.

The other teacher discovered the note and read it: “This money is so that you may buy a new pair of glasses. Thank you for all you do for your students.”

She never learned who had given the money. But she did purchase the new glasses.

For the teacher who secretly made this gift, it brought her happiness every time she saw her fellow teacher wearing the new glasses. That one gift brought her years of joy. And, in fact, that gift was the start of a long trend for her and her husband to give anonymous gifts to people in need.

Meditation

As we begin our Lenten journey, we recognize that there are lots of outward signs as we try to follow God’s path. On this very day, even though we hear about avoiding sackcloth and ashes, we get our foreheads marked with ashes to help us remember that we came from dust and to dust we shall return. It is an important marker and a tangible sign to help us remember who we are and where we have come from.

But the outward signs are not what matter most. It is what goes on inside that really counts. That is why we are told not to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. The beauty is that God sees it all, and our feelings of comfort come from our relationship with God as we follow his path. Our feelings of discomfort also often come from God.

In this story, the discomfort is from seeing a fellow faculty member not being able to afford a new pair of glasses. God urges us to help out. It sounds simple enough, but when you are struggling to pay your own bills, it is hard to help others financially. That’s discomfort.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we learn that we don’t do acts of kindness such as this to get a reward, to be recognized, to earn praise, or to have someone else return the favor. We do it because it’s the right thing to do. That is the reward. We follow God’s path and take a step into God’s kingdom.

During this Lenten Season, try putting on a new pair of glasses. See the world a bit differently. Don’t worry; God has arranged it so that we can all afford at least one pair of new glasses.

With those glasses, we can see things and do things differently. And since God knows what’s happening, we don’t need to tell the left hand what the right hand is doing.

Water the seed and ask yourself...

What anonymous gift do I see that I can make?