Our Blessings

 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. (II Corinthians 9:8)

          So far, we’ve covered two principles from my homework drawn from this passage:

1.     A life without lack is a gift, not a merely human accomplishment

2.     God’s sufficiency covers it all – all we need in all our circumstances

The second principle is also the first reason why God blesses us, so that we have all we need. The third principle is the second reason God blesses us: “the point of a life without lack is to free us to engage in sharing that life.” We are blessed so that we may abound in every good work, blessing others as we have been blessed or using the blessings we’ve received.

I fear modernity has caused us to lose this last principle. We tend to think in terms of building programs or machines to automate the blessing of others with as little personal expense as possible. We tend to think that because others don’t do as much as we think they should do, the government is justified in stepping in like a parent and forcing its “children” to share according to our dictates (which tends to involve fewer of our “toys” than it does the toys of others.) Most importantly, it no longer involves us. It is sanitized, mechanized, organized, and impersonalized.

This doesn’t only happen in society. I attended a meeting years ago in which lots of people in the church brainstormed about starting ministries in our community. Few if any of the ministries ever got started, because we (yes, I admit, I did it, too) were waiting for the pastors or some other leader to come along to do it. We wanted to be part of them happen, but someone else had to lead. We all wanted official standing and support that the pastors couldn’t have provided. It was “we want to do…but we want someone else to handle all the parts we don’t want to do.” We tend to be so busy trying to have a ministry that we don’t minister, or don’t realize that we’re ministering when we do. And those who didn’t have that faulty perspective went out and developed their ministries on their own.

Why is it that ministries always seem to be about those folks way over there? Isn’t this the same problem faced by the official ministers and church officials in the story of the Good Samaritan. They were on their way to do something important. They could not spare the time or take the chance of being made unclean or to spend the time or money to take care of the man who needed help.

I’m not saying that God doesn’t call people to ministries across the world. I’m certain that He does. But are we so busy sending missionaries to the Muslim world that we ignore the elderly widow woman next door? Do we ignore our families? Do we practice telescopic philanthropy while ignoring the poverty and need in our own homes or cities? It’s not that we should do less about “out there” but that we should do more about here.

As I’ve probably said too many times already, this was something that bothered me when COVID-19 started spreading into this country. Traditionally, Christians ran toward pandemics, moving in to help those in need while others ran away. I’m not sure that’s true, but that’s the story, and I struggled because there wasn’t anyone nearby who had the virus, and there wouldn’t have been much I could have done to help them if they did. And, when I did know of people who had it, this proved true – there wasn’t much I could do for them.

But that’s one of the complaints used to justify doing nothing that I’ve heard for years. People would complain about a problem, and when I suggested that they do something about the problem, they objected that there was nothing they could do. I developed the belief that if one saw a problem, that was God’s invitation to do something about the problem, whether that problem was litter along the road where we walk or taking the gospel to the Muslim world. We should not so closely focus on one that the other is treated as garbage.

If we are blessed to be a blessing, we should look for opportunities to bless wherever we and they may be.