09/25/2026
Food for Thought From a Chaplain Friend Jim Leary.
What I’m Thinking
“But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:3-4)
Our culture runs on the opposite instinct. We name buildings after donors. We put plaques on walls. We build entire platforms, literal and digital, on being seen doing good. And it’s not hard to understand why. Visibility builds a following. It makes a name. It’s the currency a lot of us were taught to trade in, long before we ever thought to question it.
Jesus was pushing against the same instinct in His own day. We don’t know if people were literally sounding trumpets in the streets before they gave, or if He was using an image everyone would’ve understood. Either way, the picture is clear: announce it, so people notice, so people are impressed. And Jesus says that’s not it. That’s not what following Me looks like. His people give in secret.
Here’s where it gets honest for me, and maybe for you too: I know what it feels like to do something good and not get acknowledged for it, and to feel a little cheated. That sting is real. So I’ve been asking myself: is that feeling the same thing Jesus is talking about here, or something different?
I don’t think it is. Wanting to be seen while you’re giving, performing it, timing it, making sure the right people notice. That’s what Jesus is naming. But feeling overlooked after the fact, quietly wishing someone had said thank you, that’s not the same sin. That’s just the ache of being human, of wanting your effort to matter to somebody. Jesus isn’t asking us to stop caring whether we’re seen. He’s asking us to stop needing to be seen before we’ll do the good thing at all.
So I’ve been asking myself the harder version of the question: am I actually comfortable giving in secret? Not performing comfort with it, but actually comfortable. Content to let it stay between me and God, no audience, no record kept anywhere but in His notice of it?
If I’m honest, that’s not my default. My default wants the credit, even in small ways. The mention, the thank-you note, the person who remembers. And Jesus isn’t shaming that want out of me. He’s offering something better: a Father who sees in secret and rewards in secret. Not eventually found out. Already known. Already seen. The reward isn’t that it gets discovered later. It’s that it was never actually hidden from the only audience that matters.
I think that’s the lesson underneath the lesson. It’s not really about hiding your good works from people. It’s about who you’re doing them for in the first place. When the answer is genuinely “for God, and whoever it helps”, the applause becomes optional. Nice if it comes. Not required for the thing to have been worth doing.
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A Small Invitation
This week, do one good thing and tell no one. Not your spouse, not your small group, not even in your journal where you might reread it later and feel proud. Let it be small enough that telling it costs you more than doing it.
And notice what comes up in you when you don’t get to talk about it. That reaction, whatever it is, is worth bringing honestly to God. He already sees it. You don’t have to hide the wanting-to-be-seen part from Him, even while you’re practicing hiding the deed from everyone else.
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Questions to Sit With
• Is the sting of not receiving credit the same thing Jesus is warning against in these verses, or is it a different, more human ache worth bringing to God honestly?
• Are you comfortable giving, knowing that your Heavenly Father sees, and being content with that alone?
• Who are you actually doing your good works for, and would the answer change if no one ever found out?
• What would it cost you to let your right hand stay in the dark about what your left hand is doing, just once this week?
