20. Loving Is Sharing
20
LOVING IS SHARING
The streets of India—especially in the bloated, overpopulated cities like Bombay and Calcutta—are maddening to Western visitors. Millions of homeless people are born, live and die in them. Part toilet, part barnyard, part roadway—they are also the bedroom, living room and marketplace for the poorest of the world’s poor.
In summertime’s furnace heat, the dust of centuries rises from them to fill your eyes, choking your mouth and nose. In the monsoon rains, the streets turn into vast seas of mud and sewage. In winter, the freezing pavements bring disease and death to those who have nowhere else to rest their starving bodies.
It was on one of these nightmarish streets of Bombay that I was surrounded by an army of begging children. Already late and on my way to an important meeting, I tried to ignore the pleading children as I waited for the light to turn green.
Suddenly from the sea of hungry faces I heard a voice so distinct from the rest that I was paralyzed. In crystal-clear tones, I heard her speaking in plaintive Hindi, “Sir, my father died three months ago of tuberculosis. My mother is too sick to beg anymore. My little brothers and sisters have not eaten for two days. Please, sir, they are hungry and crying. Can you please give me a few pennies so I can buy some bread?”
The light turned green. But I couldn’t move. I was arrested by the image of this little girl who must have been about 9 years old. Her face was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, perfectly shaped with big brown eyes and long black hair.
Through the tears on her cheeks, the dust and the sweat, I could see that in different circumstances this desperate little waif could easily have been a princess. Her filthy hair had obviously not been washed or combed for weeks. She was barefoot and dressed in rags. But I’m still sure she had the potential of being a winner in the Miss World beauty pageant.
Jesus Loves All the Children
Then something else happened. It was as if another face came before my eyes right beside hers. It was another child, about 8, also with big brown eyes. But she had long, clean hair and a shining face. Her clothes were fresh and colorful—and she wore nice socks and tennis shoes. I knew her. She was the best student in her class. Each night she said her prayers and read the Bible. Her parents loved her. She had a comfortable home, air-conditioned from the Texas summer and heated in the cold winter. She had a comfortable bed with clean sheets every week. I didn’t know the name of the dirty little beggar girl, but I did know the name of the girl beside her. It was Sarah, my own daughter.
Then I heard a supernatural voice beside me ask, “What is the value of this beggar girl? Is she of less value than your daughter, Sarah?”
I knew the answer from the Bible. Instinctively, I answered, “No, Lord—Jesus loves all the children of the world.”
But even as I replied, I realized that God was not asking me the question I had answered. He was asking me something more personal and life-shaking. He was really asking me about my priorities. Was I willing to love this beggar girl as Jesus loved her—in the same way that I loved myself and my own wife and my children? Would I love her with real love, the kind that shares?
You see, God is asking us to focus on the principle of love. This is the only force powerful enough to propel us across the bridges of detachment and simplicity. Only love can draw us to reality in our handling of material things, and only love can prevent us from shipwrecking on the rocks of legalism in this critical area of spiritual discipline.
The Law of Love
When Jesus was challenged to name the greatest commandment and thus sum up the moral teaching of the Old Testament Torah, He quickly answered His accusers, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37–39, emphasis mine).
This is the hinge upon which all Christian outreach turns. This is what most truly motivates us to become agents for redemption in our Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.
I read the sad story of a father in Waco, Texas. His son had been diagnosed as having cancer and needing life-saving treatment. The frantic father sold the family house, car and pickup truck to pay medical bills. When these were gone, a garage sale dispersed of everything else—even their clothes. When there was nothing left to sell, he borrowed all he could. But in the end, the boy died.
How much was that boy’s life worth to the father? It was obviously worth everything and anything. That’s how we love when disaster hits our own lives or the dear ones we love in our own families.
How Much Is a Soul Worth?
What are your own life and comfort worth to you? You find out when you get even a little toothache or headache! You run to the medicine cabinet. You go to the drug store. You go to the doctor. You pray for healing.
How much is your own eternal soul worth to you? Probably quite a lot or you wouldn’t be reading this book. It’s the reason why most of us come to Christ and go to church. We realized that our sin was taking us to hell, and that’s why we repented and called on God to save us. We care about ourselves. We want to spend eternity in heaven with our Lord and Master.
We want the same for our children, our parents, our spouse. You see, we love our own souls, and we love the souls of our dear ones. We don’t want them burning eternally in the flames of hell, separated from God and falling into the bottomless pit forever and ever. So we agonize over them and share Christ every chance we get.
This is what God is saying to us. If the very thought of one of our loved ones living on the streets of Bombay breaks us up—and if the thought of a dear one in hell is unthinkable—then how can we say we love our neighbors and let them go on an express train to hell?
Walkers—Not Just Talkers
What about the millions who are desperately waiting and wanting to hear the Gospel in Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal? What about the other millions who are being denied the Gospel in the Maldives, Bhutan, Tibet, Turkey and North Vietnam?
Whose responsibility is it that national missionaries are sent into these nations now occupied and ruled by the forces of darkness? If the world’s affluent Christians will not share with the lost, who else on this earth can afford to send forth the laborers?
We have thousands of missionaries waiting now to go to lost tribes and hidden villages—but 99 percent of all Christian giving stays in nations that have already been reached. While millions of Christians in other nations still don’t have a personal Bible, many of us have several copies—often bound in luxurious leather, which costs 30 to 40 times more than a simple Asian Bible.
Where does real love fit into all this—the kind of love that shares? When they asked Jesus essentially the same question, He told the story of the Good Samaritan who stopped and helped a stranger in need. I like the force of James’s teaching on this subject in chapter 2, verses 15 and 16: “If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?”
James says God wants walkers, not just talkers. In 1 John 3:16–18, the Bible says, “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (emphasis mine).
Caring is sharing. Loving is sharing. Missions is sharing. The whole purpose of the Church in this world can be summed up in that one word: sharing. That is what the agape love of the New Testament is really all about. It is what the Great Commission itself is all about.
But millions of Christians are still in spiritual kindergarten because we have been taught only to acquire and receive rather than practice true love by sharing.