This was a hut we visited where the women who lived there was sick and deaconness’ came and ministered to her and fed her and bandaged her wounds. I hope that our travelers have a chance to see places like this as well. The old debate is coming back again that there should be no mercy work in the mission field. We have had the debate before and I’m sure we will have it again. I just wish that everyone would read Paul in the Corinthian letters. When he talks about the raising of money for the poor in Jerusalem he says this ….
2 Corinthians 8:12-15
12 For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have. 13 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness 14 your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. 15 As it is written, “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.”
You abundance at the present time should supply their needs so that there may be “fairness”. We like that word. I think Paul really says that there should be equality but we are not to sure about that. We really don’t want poor people to be equal, or do we?
I will leave that to your conscience but the word I want to look at is really a phrase here -“at the present time”. Paul uses a particular word for time here that is really God’s time. It is a moment to take action because all of the things that we are called to be can be brought to bear for the sake of the neighbor and the glory of God. This is not as someone has said “a mundane present, but the Messianic time, which is charged to the bursting point with hope.” These are the times that President Harrison says we are “baptized for” and they have to do with caring for others that there might be “fairness”.
