I Want Nobody to Know It Was Me

Tonight we are making a pot of chicken soup with rice in it, and it is packed to be left on a step.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Put four chicken thighs in a pot with a chopped onion, two chopped carrots, two sticks of celery, a bay leaf, plenty of salt and eight cups of water. Bring it up, skim anything that foams, then simmer gently for forty minutes until the chicken is completely tender and cooked all the way through with no pink at the bone. Take the chicken out, pull the meat off, put the meat back. Taste the broth and salt it properly, because underseasoned broth is the only failure available here. Add half a cup of rice and cook fifteen minutes more until it is soft and the soup has thickened slightly. Black pepper, lemon, any green thing. It feeds six, it costs a few dollars, and it travels well in a container with a good lid.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the soup.

It is that you want to leave it and go.

There is somebody who needs feeding. You have known for a while. And every time you picture doing it, the picture that feels right is a container on a step at dusk and you already walking back to the car.

And you have been slightly troubled by that, because you cannot tell what it is. Sometimes it looks like the right instinct, the kind of quiet giving that does not need a witness. And sometimes, at about one in the morning, it looks like a way of doing a good thing without having to stand in front of anybody while you do it.

And you have not been able to settle which one it is, so you have done neither.

The instruction to keep it hidden

There is a line in Matthew that most people have heard and few people have been given permission to actually use.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. (Matthew 6:3, King James Version)

It is deliberately absurd as an image. A person's own two hands, and one of them not knowing.

And the context matters. Jesus has just described people who arrange for their giving to be visible, and He says plainly that being seen was the whole point for them and that they got what they were after.

You are being told to keep it quiet rather than warned against it, and God has never once required a person to be seen for a good thing to count. Matthew 6:3 pushes the hiding further than anybody would have, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a pot on a step the obedient version.

And then this. Not merely: do not announce it. Do not even let your own accounting of it be complete.

Which means the instinct to leave a pot and walk away is not a spiritual dodge. It is close to the plain instruction.

You are being told to keep it quiet rather than warned against it, and God has never once required a person to be seen for a good thing to count. Matthew 6:3 pushes the hiding further than anybody would have, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen at dusk.

You have not been avoiding anything by wanting it hidden, and heaven has never once needed a witness before it would receive something. It is written that we are to let not the left hand know what the right hand does, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the broth is going.

The test is not the motive, it is the delivery

Now let me deal with the one o'clock question honestly, because it deserves a real answer rather than reassurance.

Both things could genuinely be true at once. The desire to be unseen can be obedience, and it can also be avoidance, and they feel identical from the inside. Nobody can sort that out by examining themselves at one in the morning, and the attempt is what has kept you in the kitchen.

So here is the only useful test, and it is not about the motive at all.

You are not required to purify your reasons first, and God has never once held a meal at a door pending an investigation of the cook. The Spirit of God is saying it the way Matthew 6 says it: give quietly, and let even your own accounting of it stay incomplete.

Did the person get fed.

That is the whole test. If the food arrives, the thing is done, and whatever mix of motives carried it there does not change the fact that somebody ate. And if the food does not arrive, then no amount of correct motive is worth anything, because James is very clear about what a warm feeling accomplishes.

A mixed motive is not a verdict on whether to go.

You are not required to purify your reasons first, and God has never once held a meal at the door pending an investigation of the cook. The passage instructs concealment without ever demanding an audit of the heart behind it, and the Spirit of God is the one who moves somebody past a question that cannot be answered from the inside.

You have been examining yourself instead of going, and the examination has fed nobody. Matthew 6 is a chapter about doing good things quietly rather than about doing them perfectly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a stuck man out of his own head.

Leave it, and text three words

Here is the practical part, and it has a specific shape.

Fill a container you do not need back. Drive over at dusk. Put it on the step. Walk away.

Then text three words: soup on step. No name if you do not want your name on it. No message about hoping they are alright, because that requires a reply.

You have a complete act in your hands tonight, and God has never once needed anything attached to a meal for it to land. It is written that the left hand is not to know what the right hand does, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes three words and a warm container the whole of it.

The three words matter for one practical reason. Food left with no message can sit there for hours, or get taken by an animal, or go cold and be thrown out. The point is that the person eats, and three words are the minimum that guarantees it.

And then leave it entirely alone. Do not wait for a thank you and do not go back to see if the container is gone.

That is the whole thing, and it is a complete act, and it needs nothing else attached to it.

You are able to do this without ever standing in front of anybody, and God has never once made a doorstep conversation the price of feeding somebody. Matthew 6:3 pushes hiddenness to the point of absurdity and treats it as the good version, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a warm pot on a step into exactly that.