Saturday: He Left It All
WEEK 51
SATURDAY
HE LEFT IT ALL
Luke 12:13-21
We are seeing the principle of stewardship at work when all the powers of a person’s life are in control of God’s Spirit. Then the principle controlling the early disciples will control us, “And the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brethren who lived in Judea; and they did so” (Acts 11:29-30 RSV). Note two things: “according to his ability,” the principle of giving; according to his need, the principle of receiving. And note further: When they “determined,” they did so. They didn’t promise themselves and others and then slip out of it; they did it.
Many a person determines to make a will giving money to kingdom causes but doesn’t do so. And then? Well, somebody asked an African American about a certain man who had died recently, how much he had left, and got the reply, “He left it all.” He left it all for relatives to quarrel over, possibly, and to squander. Only what you give away do you take with you. The story goes of a rich man who died and was shown around the heavenly city before he was shown his own abode. He was surprised to find his gardener had such a lovely house and expected to see a much larger one for himself, but was disappointed to find his own was smaller than the gardener’s. When he asked the reason, he was told, “Well, that’s all the material you sent up.”
The Lushai and Naga people of Assam, India, were head-hunters until Christianized. When I asked some of their leaders if they could give me illustrations of people among them being transformed by Christianity, they laughed and said, “Look around you. We are all examples of the transforming power of Christ; we were all head-hunters.” One of the signs of transformation was the fact that every household had a vessel in which they set aside a portion of the grain they were about to cook for themselves, the Lord’s portion at every meal. They raised eighty thousand rupees in that way one year. The same year a group of them traveled across India singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” in marvelous harmony. Those two facts are connected: Give and your heart sings.
O Spirit Divine, take my powers and use them. I hold nothing that is not at your disposal: money, time, talents, everything. And as you use them, I too shall sing. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All my determinations shall become doings; my consents shall become conclusions.