Saturday: Such as IHave IGive
WEEK 24
SATURDAY
SUCH AS I HAVE I GIVE
Acts 15:5, 28
We look, on this our last day of meditation on the mastery of inadequacy, at the way the people of the Acts mastered inadequacy. Note Peter said to the lame man at the Beautiful Gate: “I don’t have any money”—that was inadequacy, the most serious inadequacy modern people know. The hell of an empty purse is the deepest hell that modern materialism can conceive. Peter was there. But he walked straight out of that hell of material inadequacy into the heaven of adequacy: “but I will give you what I do have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6). If he had been adequate—had money—he would have tossed him a coin, and that would have ended it. But blocked at the material, he turned to the spiritual, turned to grace, and a deathless deed resulted—the man walked! The blocking became a blessing!
Note again: “Those who had been scattered moved on, preaching the good news” (8:4). The persecution didn’t break them; it made them. Blocked here, they broke out there, and broke out into larger and larger opportunity. They were like quicksilver: the more you squeeze it to suppress it, the more you scatter it.
Note again: “Some believers from among the Pharisees stood up and claimed, ‘The Gentiles must be circumcised. They must be required to keep the Law from Moses” (15:5). A lovely name for believers—“believers from the Pharisees”! They had no business as believers to belong to the Pharisees. They belonged to Christ! That double allegiance and off-centeredness of a group drove Paul and Barnabas to go to Jerusalem for a clarification of the Christian position. That clarification broke the chrysalis and let the glorious butterfly of the gospel free of Jewish shackles. The opposition turned into opportunity.
Everything that happened brought them out on the victory side of things. From within them there was an expansive push of the Creative Spirit through inadequacy to Adequacy, through emptiness to Fullness, through nothingness to Everything. “We can do all things!” they cried. And they could.
O Mighty Spirit, work within my weakness to transform it into your Strength, within my foolishness and make it into your Wisdom, within my all and make it into your All. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Everything that happens will bring me out on the victory side of things today.