Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Luke 12:33-34
“The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he [or she] no longer needs our gift. We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. Thus a heavy task is laid upon this Gift-love. It must work towards its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say “They need me no longer” should be our reward.”
C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960) 76.
We should serve those who need our help like we launch children: leading them from a place of dependency to discipleship.
For a time, they depend on us. We help them. Then we become superfluous. The reward is that we have reproduced ourselves.
This is God’s design. Regardless of what others are doing, use what you have to build up recipients, so they do the same for others.
This is not about giving a hand-outs but about giving hand-up. And there are eternal implications to this. We can anticipate an unfailing reward.