Monday Meditation: New Beginnings, Part three: The body thrives
Many readers of this blog can identify with the generosity described in today’s passages. They’ve seen something similar in their own Christian communities.
They’ve watched church members readying a widow’s house for sale.
They’ve rejoiced as believers collected cash to pay another believer’s medical bills.
They’ve taken food to funeral dinners or households coping with a new baby or a dire disease.
And many caregivers have been the beneficiaries of this kind of kindness: Meals ready to warm, delivered to their doorstep. Volunteer caregivers whose visits allowed them to get out of the house. Cash, gift cards, books, flowers.
We may have never seen someone selling a possession for money to meet another’s need. In our affluence, that’s seldom necessary; we share from our overflow.
But we do so with the same spirit that motivated the first believers. We love each other, and we can’t bear to relax in our abundance while another is in need.
And even caregivers in need have something to share. Perhaps when a volunteer relieves us of caregiving, we can volunteer elsewhere: at a food bank or a reading program. Perhaps when we’ve paid the bills, we have extra to help someone else fill the gap. And always we can encourage the encouragers: with a hearty thank-you, with a question about their family or their health, with prayers for God to bless them even as they’ve blessed us.
The first believers “had everything in common,” the Scripture tells us. “They were one in heart and mind.” It can happen even today, all these centuries later. Every believer has the chance to foster such fellowship, even caregivers in the midst of their own great needs.
Read: Acts 2:42-27; 4:32-37
Pray: We’re so thankful, Lord, for the goodness that gets bounced from believer to believer in the church. Help me, Lord, to see how I can be a giver as well as the recipient of others’ generosity.
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