Never walk away from someone who deserves help; your hand is God’s hand for that person. Don’t tell your neighbor “Maybe some other time” or “Try me tomorrow” when the money’s right there in your pocket. [Proverbs 3:27-28 (MSG)]
Yesterday, I wrote about finding the 1967 church program from the day my in-laws joined their church. The mimeographed bulletin insert for that day included a story about a little boy, barefoot and dressed in rags, who was walking home from church. A neighbor fellow asked where he’d been and, when the boy said he’d been at church, the man asked what he’d learned there. The boy joyfully replied, “Jesus loves me!” The fellow responded disdainfully, “If Jesus loves you so much, why didn’t he tell somebody to give you some decent clothes and a pair of shoes?” The boy confidently answered, “Jesus did tell someone, but I think they forgot!”
This story reminded me of one I heard recently about a well-known pastor. The gentleman was invited to speak at a Christian women’s conference at a large wealthy church. Before the program began, the event’s chairwoman read a letter from a Venezuelan missionary expressing an urgent need for $4,000. She then asked the visiting pastor to open the conference with a prayer that God would provide the resources to meet the mission’s needs. The man surprised everyone by denying her request. Explaining that he believed God had already provided the money, he added that he was going to place all the cash he had in his pocket on a table and invited the women to do the same thing.
Confused, the chairwoman finally said she saw his point; of course, they all need to give sacrificially. “No!” he said, adding that he was trying to teach them that God had already provided for the mission. Putting the $15 from his pocket on the table, he looked at the chairwoman expectantly. Reluctantly, she opened her purse and added her cash to his. One by one, the other women opened their purses and brought their money to the table. When it all was counted, more than $4,000 had been collected. The pastor explained: “Now, here’s the lesson. God always supplies for our needs and he supplied for this missionary, too. The only problem was that we were keeping it for ourselves. Now let’s pray and thank God for His provision.”
When we become members of the Church, we become the mouth, hands, and feet of Jesus and should be doing the things that Jesus would do if He were here physically on the earth. As members of His body, do we honor our commitment to be the conduit of God’s blessings to His children? Could we be holding the answer to someone’s prayers right in our hands? Could we have forgotten to give a little boy his clothes and shoes? Or weren’t we listening when Jesus spoke to us?
While recovering from foot surgery, I had home visits from Mike, a physical therapist. He told me of a day, more than eighteen years ago, when he visited a new elderly patient. The obviously wealthy man lived alone in a beautifully appointed 6,000 square foot penthouse overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Mike remembers him as the most unpleasant, uncooperative, bitter and miserable person he’s ever met. After that visit, the therapist drove to a nearby town for another new patient visit. Although less than an hour’s drive northeast of the affluent man’s luxurious home, it was a world apart. Today, the population in the first town has a median age of 65.6, a median household income of over $90,000, and a poverty rate of less than 10%. Just thirty miles away, the second town has a median age of 26, with a median household income of less than $29,000, and 41.6% of its population live below the poverty level. Although the numbers were different eighteen years ago, the disparity would have been the same (or even worse).
Yesterday’s devotion made me do some hard thinking about my commitment to Christian missions. Unfortunately, there are large segments of the world’s population that have never heard of Jesus. According to the Joshua Project (an organization that gathers, integrates and shares information to facilitate the implementation of the Great Commission), 41.6 % of the world’s population is considered “unreached,” meaning they have little or no history of Christianity and the number of native Christians and available resources are so minimal that outside assistance is necessary if the Gospel is going to be heard.
When I was a little girl, I once went to mass with my Roman Catholic cousins. Before leaving for church, my mother pressed two shiny quarters into my hand. “For the offering,” she reminded me. Part way through the service, long-handled offering baskets were extended down each row and people dropped their offering envelopes and money into them. “Who will know?” I thought as I reached into my pocket and pulled out just one quarter for the offering. Almost immediately, another basket came down our row. “God saw me!” I thought in a panic. “God knows I was holding out on Him and now the priest has sent the basket back.” I quickly reached into my pocket for the second quarter. As I dropped it into the basket, I heaved a great sigh of relief; I was safe from Hell for at least one more day. My only consolation was that I clearly wasn’t the only sinner; other people had dropped money into that second basket. Looking back, I think the second basket probably was for a special offering of some kind. To my child’s mind, however, that second basket was for those of us who hadn’t given God what belonged to Him.
Some things never change and, aside from death, it’s said that taxes are the only other sure thing in our lives. Along with a poll (or head) tax, the Romans had a variety of other taxes including customs taxes, property taxes, import and export taxes, crop taxes, toll bridges, sales tax, and special taxes when there was a war or building project to finance. Sounds a bit like nowadays! Yesterday was April 15, the day the IRS demanded what is theirs. When you put “the” and “IRS” together you get the word “theirs” and, once we’ve filed our taxes, it sure feels like the government considers most of what’s ours to be theirs!
