Ask Not, Have Not
I love to tell people about the time my pistol of a mother snagged us a ride on a helicopter. We were in the middle of post-tsunami Sumatra, waiting on a plane, and my mother saw a helicopter pilot and thought to herself, “You know what? I’ve never gone on a helicopter before. I think I’m going to ask that pilot if he’d take us up for a ride.”
Being eighteen at the time, I was slightly mortified at my mother’s forwardness, but she settled the matter with Scripture, as is her habit (and may I say, there is no better way to win an argument than to whack someone in the head with the Word of God). She blithely trotted out James 4:2b, “You have not because you ask not,” and before anyone could stop her, she’d batted her eyelashes at the helicopter pilot and we were thousands of feet above the wreckage of Acehnese shoreline.
This week I’ve been thinking about her out-of-context, utterly shameless take on Scripture (it’s about talking to God, Mom, not people). Here’s why that instance has been on my mind:
I got a text from my sister who lives in Chad letting me know that the library card number she’d borrowed from Tiny (don’t ask) so that she could get online library books had expired. The next day, Littles informed me that he could no longer get online library books from that same account. “Oh, well,” I thought. “We have three other online libraries we can access. It’s not that big of a deal.” It was a library we’d used for a few months three years ago, so, really, it’s pretty awesome that we’d been able to use it as long as we had.
And then…I had a book I wanted to borrow that was, you guessed it, only available from that one specific library. And suddenly, in my utterly selfish moment of need, I remembered, “You have not because you ask not.” And I took a page from my mother’s book, called the library, and asked if our cards could possibly be reactivated even though we were no longer in the area.
It was a two minute phone call. They reactivated the account.
Ta-da, suddenly I could get the book I’d been wanting (the second in a series—it always happens with series). My sister could once again get kindle loans all the way in Chad. And Littles and Tiny could continue abusing their kindle with twenty gazillion Encyclopedia Brown and Wings of Fire novels. And it took me less time than it would to track down my hairbrush (although that’s not saying much—the girls are always hiding it in weird places in their attempts to keep from having to legitimately clean up).
But why did I tell you both of these stories? Other than to drive home the joys of taking verses out of context when they usefully help to shut up your teenage daughter… I told them to you because they made me think about what motivates me to actually ask.
My mother was motivated by the joy of the experience. She wanted to try something new. She wanted to share it with me (and my dad, who spent most of that afternoon rolling his eyes at the two of us).
I, on the other hand, was motivated to call the library because I had been inconvenienced. Not even because I wanted to do something nice for my sister. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I could do something nice for her until I’d dealt with the annoyance of not having library access myself.
I love that now Amanda can read all the YA fluff novels she wants after long days of nearly wrecking her vehicle on dirt roads and keeping her dogs from eating roadside goats and helping tortoises walk the red carpet at weddings (this is legit). But I wish that serving her had been my first motivation, and that I had called a week earlier. Once I realized I could fix the problem just by asking, it was so very easy to fix (and we all know that’s not always the case).
At the end of the day, I’m reminded, again, that I not only want to learn from my mother that wonderful, totally out of context truth that I have not because I ask not (and yes, there are about five different and far more serious and important blog posts I could’ve written about that verse), but also that I want to be motivated by sharing joy…and not because I’ve found myself personally inconvenienced.
So here’s to you, Mom, and to asking for things we need (and sometimes things we just want), and to being motivated by shared joy.
PS You should know that after I called the library, I called my mom and told her all about it, and we crowed, in unison, “You have not because you ask not!” and then howled about it together.
PPS You should also know that the picture I included of my ridiculous mother was when I was teasing her that her legs weren’t long enough to get her across that puddle without falling in. She made it across safely going and coming (even while I heckled her mercilessly). Then I fell in. She nearly peed her pants laughing at me. And oh, did I deserve it.
