I Do It For Free For Everybody

You do it for everybody. You always have.

And the strange part, the part that makes this hard to talk about without it sounding like a complaint, is that you enjoy it. Genuinely. There is no martyrdom in this and no resentment either, most days.

So when somebody suggests that you could be paid for it, something in you moves away from the idea before you have thought about it, and what it feels like is that being paid would change what the thing is.

That instinct deserves respect rather than an argument, so let me handle it carefully.

You are giving away work and not giving away yourself, and being paid for a thing has never once made the doing of it less kind.

Here is the distinction I would like to put in front of you.

Generosity is a decision. It is a thing a person does on purpose, this time, for this person, because they saw a need and moved toward it.

A default is not a decision. It is a setting that got made once, years ago, and has been running without review ever since. It looks exactly like generosity from the outside and it is a different thing entirely from the inside, because nobody is choosing anything.

And what I would like to ask is not whether you should stop being generous. It is whether you have made a single actual decision about this in about fifteen years.

Tell me, what shall thy wages be

There is a moment in Genesis where an older man stops a younger one and asks him a direct question about money, and it is not presented as a rebuke.

And Laban said unto Jacob, Because thou art my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought? tell me, what shall thy wages be? (Genesis 29:15, King James Version)

Shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought.

The reason given for the question is the relationship. Because you are my kin, should you work for me for nothing. And the answer the verse expects is no.

You are looking at a text where nearness was a reason to be paid rather than a reason not to be, and being close to somebody has never once been a reason for the work to be free. Genesis 29:15 says shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought, and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept that question in the record.

And notice the second half of it. Tell me, what shall thy wages be.

The one who is going to pay asks the one who is going to work to name it. The naming is put in the worker's mouth, not in the employer's.

You have the naming in your own mouth, and a price said by the person doing the work has never once been an improper thing in scripture. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts that sentence there in that order, and it is written in Genesis 29:15 as a plain and reasonable question.

What free has actually done

Now let me name a few things that have happened while the default was running, and I will not dress them up.

The first one is scheduling. Free work goes last. It has to, because the paid work has to be done, so the thing you are best at gets the tired hours at the end of a Saturday.

You are giving your worst hours to the thing you are best at, and last in the week has never once been the place a person puts what they value. The written word treats a man's labor as something with a value attached to it, and the Spirit of God is the one who will not let good work be quietly demoted.

The second one is the asking. Because it is free, people ask more easily, and because they ask more easily, they ask for more, and because there is no price, there is nothing to say no with.

A price is not only money. A price is also a boundary, and you have been working without one for fifteen years.

You have been carrying a thing that has no edges, and work without a price has never once had a natural place to stop. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person a shape to their own week, and Genesis 29:15 has the wages named at the beginning rather than left open.

And the third one, which is the one that matters for this month.

The thing you do for free is almost certainly the strongest thing in your hands. That is usually how it goes: the thing a person gives away is the thing they are best at, because it is easy for them. And it is currently not on the list of ways the month could close, for no reason except habit.

You are holding your strongest thing outside the accounts, and a habit has never once been an assessment of what something is worth. The Spirit of God is the one who brings a thing back into view, and it is written that a man was asked to name his wages for work he was already doing.

Keep one free, and name the rest

So here is the assignment, and I want to protect the thing you care about while I give it.

Say out loud the one thing you are genuinely good at, and name one person who needs it. Genesis 29:15 asks a worker to name his own wages, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person permission to say the sentence out loud.

And here is the part that makes it bearable. Keep one free.

Choose one person, deliberately, on purpose, and do theirs for nothing, and know while you are doing it that you chose it. That is generosity, and it will feel completely different from the default because you will have decided it.

You are able to choose one and name the rest, and a chosen gift has never once been worth less than an automatic one. The Holy Spirit is the one who turns a setting back into a decision, and the written word puts the wage question at the front of the arrangement rather than in the middle of it.