It was a slow Monday in April. I was at my desk working toward an empty inbox, moving at about half speed, maybe because it was Monday and maybe because my body was still coming down from the weeks before it. Down the hall the crew spent the day drilling through concrete.
The offering got counted that morning, and it turned up something I had never seen. Somebody had put a tally of $2 bills in the plate. There was no name on it and no note with it.
You don’t end up with $2 bills by accident. The bank doesn’t hand them out with your twenties, so somebody asked for them at a counter on purpose, and then carried them to church and let them go.
I don’t know who it was, and I’ve decided I don’t need to. Whoever it was already made that call, and it was a good one. Working it out would only undo the thing they went to the trouble of doing.
Jesus tells people to give so quietly that their own left hand misses it. I’ve usually heard that as a warning against showing off, which it is. That Monday it sounded more like a blessing on somebody who had already worked it out.
Most of what comes in never reaches me in a form I would recognize. Gifts arrive online, or by draft on the first of the month, or in an envelope filled out before church. I get a total on a page. I don’t get the story behind it, and there is a story behind every line.
The $2 bills haven’t come back. I’d probably know if they had, because that is the kind of thing people mention. So it was one Sunday, from one person, in a form I still can’t explain.
The plate goes around again this Sunday. I’m grateful for whatever ends up in it, including the part I’ll never hear about.