Thursday, February 8, 2018

Devotion - Thursday, February 8

During our program last night, I got some perplexed looks when I pointed out that in the earliest of the early church those who joined also sold their possessions and put the money into a common treasury.  I repeated this, and then made sure to ask, "Do you believe that this is in the Bible?"  Some accounts, in the Bible, are difficult to swallow.

I read another one this morning.  In Romans 12:21.  "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink."  I am not making this up - you can fact-check me!

The culture in which we live attempts to teach us to be quick in our labeling the other as an "enemy" and then opposing them in every way.  We are encouraged to place blame upon the stranger or the alien or the one whose outlook upon the world differs from our own.  We speak of a loosely defined "way of life" as if it were the blessed community itself.

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink."  Paul goes on to point out that in so doing, we place a burden upon the other, a burden of "hot coals," which is the only hope for the evil, the anger, or whatever it is that makes the other oppose us to be burned away and thus the person purified.  It is God, God's Word, and God's Word lived out through us which will allow the other to also come to understand how destructive it is to harbor hatred for any of God's children.

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink."  This is the kind of world I want to live in.  In so far as it is possible, I will live such a world into being.

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