The Tool That Was Lent and Never Returned
Updated: Sep 3
“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.”Luke 6:35
You remember lending it. A good tool. Reliable. The one you preferred. It left your hand with a promise of return.
Weeks passed. Then months. The conversation never quite happened.
Jesus spoke of giving without expecting the same thing back. He also knew the small ache of what is not returned. He told his friends to lend, and not to build their peace on the other person’s memory. That teaching is hard in a workshop. A tool has a weight. A place. A way of fitting the hand. When it does not come back, something ordinary is missing.
Some losses are quiet. No drama. Just the slow acceptance that a particular tool now lives in another place, serving another set of hands.
You do not have to chase it. You do not have to turn the absence into a long story of injustice.
Another tool can be found. Or the work can be done another way.
The Mass trains us in this kind of letting go. We bring bread and wine. They do not come back to us as our property. They are given, blessed, broken, and shared. Christ gives himself, and he does not keep a record of return. That does not make every loss easy. It does mean that what leaves our hands can still serve someone.
What was lent has entered a larger circulation.
That, too, can be a form of generosity.