A number of years ago I had the privilege of speaking in a small Mexican church that was only minutes from our southern border. I was shocked to find that the church had no running water and no electricity. The pastor lived next store to the church and with great pride he showed me his cinder block home. It also had no running water or electicity.
As I stood there that evening I asked myself, “What would you do if God called you to serve here?” I really was not happy with my answer. I guess I knew that it was so unlikely that I just put it out of my mind.
I have thought about that time on many occasions and I still do not like the answer to that question. The rich young ruler did not answer a similar question put to him. Jesus asked him to sell all that he had and follow the Lord. The Bible tells us that he walked away sorrowful, and, as far as we know, never changed his mind about that.
Think about it. That rich young ruler had no telephone, no TV, no electricity, no car, no indoor plumbing, and lacked a great number of other rather standard items that we have today. If he was rich, what are we?
There is no way that we can adequately identify with people who have so much less than we do. Believe me, that is a lot of the people of the world. I remember a man who walked a day and a half in Korea, and his journey was to ask me to come speak at his church. I was a corporal in the Army and was honored to speak in his church. The Sunday came that I was there and it was what they called “Harvest Sunday.’ The people all brought their produce in and put it at the front of the church. It was their annual tithe. I was impressed that they had so little, but they gave from what they had.
It seems that we should learn that lesson. We may be eligible for food stamps but we should give what we have. We can’t solve the inequities of the world, but we can do what we can do. That is what God wants from us. We need to remember that lesson that David learned in I Chronicles 29 when he saw the great gifts that the people had brought. He had the realization that they did not bring their gifts to God as a gift to Him, but they brought to God what was already His. We have nothing that does not belong to Him already. When we get to the place of thinking that what we have is ours then we have failed to understand that it all is His.
It is time to understand that we are His, what we have is His, and what we give to Him is already His. It is sad to think that there are people who do not have enough. It is sadder to understand that most of us have too much. We don’t have to give an account for what others have or do not have. We must give an account for what we have and what we did when we found out that it already belongs to Him.
