Wednesday: Distribution According to Need
WEEK 52
WEDNESDAY
DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEED
2 Corinthians 8:13-15
We continue to gather up the masteries actual in the disciples and possible to us.
They mastered the material by a very simple but effective attitude: they would keep as much of the material as they needed, “distribution was made to each as any had need” (Acts 4:35 RSV). They went straight to the heart of a problem; need not greed was the controlling principle. Each person was to have as much of the material as would make that one more mentally, physically, and spiritually fit for the purposes of the kingdom of God. The rest belonged to other people’s needs. That was solidly wise and operative for today.
Then this mastery of relationships brought about the most beautiful human society that ever existed—the koinonia, the fellowship—a new word for a new fact. That koinonia was a classless society and a raceless society, animated by agape—love—a new word expressing a new fact. Eros—human, sex love, was replaced by agape—divine love. Out of the koinonia as the soul, the church as a body was formed. Where there is koinonia, there is the church; but where there is no koinonia, there is no church. The koinonia was the organism out of which the organization, the church, was formed.
Then there was the mastery of the relationship between the material and the spiritual. The twelve missed their step and said they would give themselves to the spiritual and turn the material over to the seven. They put asunder what God had joined together in the incarnation when the Word became flesh. They drove a wedge between the material and the spiritual and impoverished both. The seven kept them together. They became the center of revival power; the center of spiritual awakening shifted from the twelve to the seven. Through the seven the spiritual contagion went to other peoples; they became the center of the missionary movement. They mastered the material; the twelve dodged it.
O God, our Lord, we thank you that you tipped the weight of your power to those who keep life a unit, all controlled by you. For in you, life is one. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All my material relations shall express the spiritual this day.