BY ALDEN THOMPSON

CAN HELP YOU," SHE SAID EAGERLY.

Scarcely waiting for my reply, the little wisp of a girl was at my side. Together we crisscrossed the lawn, picking off the tall dandelion stems that had escaped the blades of my classic push mower. It had been a good spring for dandelions. She chattered away merrily as we went about our curious task.

But I was puzzled: Was this a labor of love, or was she hoping for pay? A couple of times she had fed our cat while we were away, and sometimes we had asked her brother to mow our lawn. But those occasions hadn't been a problem. Her family wasn't wealthy, and the youngsters seemed pleased with the chance to earn a little extra.

But this time something about her manner made me think she wanted to help just for the fun of it, just to be with somebody, somebody who would listen to her chatter. She was eager, buoyant, and carefree. Our common task seemed more like play than work, shadowed by only a moment of wistfulness when she said, "I can't help my daddy anymore because he moved away."

But that pensive moment had passed quickly. She brightened again, and we went cheerily on our way, chasing down the jaunty dandelion stems.

Pay? Suddenly I feared that the miser in me had cooked up an evil scheme to save a few nickels at a child's expense. That would never do. I would keep my conscience clean and give her a dollar. Yes, I would pay her.

"Thank you," I said, handing her the money. "You're a good helper. It's been fun."

She hesitated a moment, then took the dollar. But the shadow was back, and the lilt was gone from her voice as she said, "I can help you again sometime—and not just for money."

Too late I realized that my dollar had torn another hole in her wounded heart. Though starved for a father's love, she still knew what love meant and longed to give it. But money had marred the precious gift she wanted me to have.

Who planted that longing for unconditional love in the heart of our little neighbor? Her Creator. But the gift will be at risk in an adult world where pay too easily substitutes for love and play—as it did out among the dandelions that day.

In my mind both her statements are somehow linked together and continue to haunt me; I'm not sure which is more troubling: "I can't help my daddy anymore because he moved away," or "I can help you again sometime—and not just for money." I hear echoes of muffled sobs in the night, cries for a secure world in which parents and children can love and be loved without fear of loss.

However reasonable divorce may appear to the adults involved, the children of broken homes are not so easily convinced. And their long memories crop up in curious places. Ari Goldman, for example, in The Search for God at Harvard (Random House, 1991), tucks in, without warning, a chapter decrying the breakup of his parents' marriage. In that chapter—suggestively entitled "Original Sin"—he declares: "More than any other event in my life, my parents' divorce in 1955, when I was six years old, shaped me into the person I am, professionally, emotionally and religiously" (p. 53).

The first time I assigned Goldman's book for a class, I mentioned that I was surprised at the intensity of his feelings. "I wasn't!" came a chorus of voices.

"How many of you are from broken homes?" I asked. The hands went up, matching the voices I had heard.

One student pointed to another quote from Goldman: "To my mind, divorce is a deplorable breach of contract, and I say without humor that children should be allowed to sue" (p. 57).

"That's right!" he said with conviction.

Robbed of the love we crave, we dream of demanding it as our right or getting money in its place—probably sensing that real love cannot be demanded or bought. But maybe that simply shows how hard it is to separate unconditional love from the idea of obligation. And linking love and obligation again raises the specter of some kind of tie between love and money.

It's true that gifts of love often involve money. The perfume Mary poured on Jesus' feet cost a year's wages (John 12:3-5, NIV); the widow gave her all with her two coins (Luke 21); and David was right when he said that he couldn't give offerings to the Lord that had cost him nothing (2 Sam. 24).

But money also insidiously puts love at risk. I learned something about that when I paid our little neighbor for what she had hoped would be a gift. Money also twists the heart when we think about "working" for God and church. Some years ago—I was brave enough to try this only once—I floated the following thesis in class for purposes of discussion: "All faculty should be paid the same salary." The idea of an egalitarian pay scale was quickly labeled as nonsense; the dominant conviction supported fair market value: "Pay me what I'm worth, or I'm out of here."

Engineering and business salaries double or triple those in English, history, and theology. What would that mean for the service of love in a church college? Troubling thought.

Our longing for unconditional love is a gift from God, just as God's love itself is the purest example of such love. He didn't just describe the ideal: He took human flesh and lived it, indeed died for it, so that we might have the greatest gift of all, eternal life with Him. Where God's gift is the central focus of a worshipping community, it prompts a complex response of gratitude and obligation, freedom and commitment.

But a cash-based secular culture so easily corrupts the soul. With a price tag on everything, even on our broken promises, what does it mean to follow Jesus? Somehow I think the heart of our little neighbor had come close to the answer.

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Alden Thompson is professor of biblical studies at Walla Walla College, College Place, Washington.