The Bible Study guys didn’t seem to make much progress. They spent the entire hour discussing only
one sentence:
And all who believed were together and had all things in common;
and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to
all, as any had need. – Acts 2:45
The discussion quickly got past any notions of communism,
and focused on the concept of “community”.
We discussed at length our cultures’ --- and our personal --- collapsing
community. We see it in families which
can’t even find time to dine together, and full churches of people who don’t
really know one another. We discussed
how “friends,” as spoken of today, are really more often “acquaintances.” We actually have few friends. And then we discussed things that friends do,
as witnessed by the words in Acts describing the early Church.
At the bottom line, friends freely love one another, without
counting the cost. They freely give of
their time and resources. Each of the
Bible Study guys had an example of someone in need they had helped, but all
sadly admitted those were rare examples.
It doesn’t come easy to think of others first, especially strangers.
We discussed how sometimes our efforts to help our spouses
or children too are unappreciated, and seem to yield no results, and we get
discouraged. Then we thought of St.
Theresa and her efforts at helping the sick and dying on the streets of
Calcutta. Did they who may never have heard
a kind word or felt a kind gesture in their entire lives respond to her with
words of: “Oh thank you, Mother, bless you, or I’ll pray for you?” That’s unlikely. More likely she heard: “Stop it.
Ouch! Leave me alone!” She’s thought of as being a saint not because
of all those she helped --- the streets of Calcutta are still full of the sick
and the dying --- but she’s thought of as a saint because of her loving efforts
to help, even if she saw no great results, and because she trusted that God DID
see results.
My contribution to the conversation was what happened over
the recent holiday, on the day I arrived in Arizona. One of the first things I did was go to the
store to pick up those things I was discouraged from carrying on the
plane: aerosol cans for shaving cream and
hair spray. At the checkout line in
front of me was a young couple, both of whom (by their actions, words and
facial expressions) seemed to have some sort of mental disability. And when they went to pay, the clerk told
them their card didn’t have sufficient funds to pay the total. This seemed to confuse them, and then they
began to discuss what they “would have to put back.” So I stepped up and offered to pay what they
still owed. They quickly said thank you,
and went back to their discussion, as I paid their balance due. I didn’t give a thought to their curt
gratitude. As I told the Bible Study
guys, I’m not sure they knew or would later remember what had happened. What WAS memorable, however, was the young
checkout clerk’s reaction. He seemed
stunned that I willingly paid some few dollars to help my neighbor in
need. And as I checked out my few
groceries, the clerk went on and on about what I had done. It wasn’t until later, I told the Bible Study
guys, that I realized that who I intended to help and who God intended to help through
my efforts may have been different people, me to help the shoppers and Him the
clerk. Or, perhaps it was I who was meant
to be helped, when God showed me that His intents were so much better than
mine.
And so the Bible Study discussion continued on the path of
how God uses our good intentions to love, often for better or bigger purposes
than we can perceive. And a lack of
gratitude for our efforts, or a lack of results (as we see them) shouldn’t
deter our efforts to love. We just need
to act in love, and trust God.
And then we remembered the man from long ago who chose to
love in a great way, and no one seemed to understand HIS efforts at love, as He
chose to die on the cross.
It was only one sentence in the Bible we studied, but from
it we learned a lot, in time well-spent, one Friday morning last week.
