¹⁰ I’m giving you my opinion about this. It’s to your advantage to do this, since you not only started to do it last year but you wanted to do it too. ¹¹ Now finish the job as well so that you finish it with as much enthusiasm as you started, given what you can afford. ¹² A gift is appreciated because of what a person can afford, not because of what that person can’t afford, if it’s apparent that it’s done willingly. ¹³ It isn’t that we want others to have financial ease and you financial difficulties, but it’s a matter of equality. ¹⁴ At the present moment, your surplus can fill their deficit so that in the future their surplus can fill your deficit. In this way there is equality. ¹⁵ As it is written, The one who gathered more didn’t have too much, and the one who gathered less didn’t have too little.^[a]