Silver and Gold Have I
Here’s what happened to me a couple of days ago:
I was coming out of the local Trader Joe’s and a man stopped me as I was loading my groceries into the trunk of my car.
“Excuse me lady.” He told me a story of his desperation to get back to Reading. (An hour away.) Some issue with a girlfriend and now he was stuck in my town. He needed money to get home. I know we can get into all sorts of discussions about this situation. The story is longer than I care to write or you care to read, but as I saw it, these were my options:
1. Grill him on why he’s in this situation
2. Tell him I can’t help him
3. Give him the money
4. Drive him back to Reading
5. Help him figure out another way to get home
6. Share the love of Christ with him: There is a God; He loves you; he wants a relationship with you.
7. Share the love of Christ AND give him the money
I did love him by talking with him and then giving him money. However what I did not do was to share the love of Jesus with him.
Now, before you jump all over me, I know you don’t have to verbalize the good news at every turn. There’s plenty of scripture about simply loving others in action. True.
But here’s what just struck me:
When asked for help in the scriptures, Peter said, “silver and gold, I don’t have, BUT what I do have I give to you. “ He spoke the name of Jesus over a man and he was healed. I, living here today, spoke to a man in need and gave him money to meet that need.
I live my whole life to share the love of Jesus in deed and in word, and my choice that day was to compassionately speak with this man and give him money.
I think our Christian cultural issues that we see in contrast to the other continents of this globe are about power. The love of God displayed in Jesus is the power of salvation.
But I didn’t give him Jesus – I gave money.
I’m real because God is so real. ~ Nancy
We had a similar encounter late Saturday night as we were walking back to our car after celebrating a friend’s birthday in Philadelphia. A homeless man asked my husband if he could spare a cigarette. In my husband’s generous manner he gave the man the whole box (health concerns aside). The man was very appreciative, and without asking for anything more, my husband reached in to his wallet and handed the man money as well. The moment the man looked most grateful however, was when my husband made eye contact and called him “Sir”. I spoke with the man briefly too and then we parted. It wasn’t until we were quite some distance that I thought I should have asked him if I could pray with him. I felt guilty that I had missed an opportunity. I prayed for him in the car as we drove home, but it felt like second best. I have thought and prayed about the encounter in the following days and have come to two conclusions. First, I want to start the habit of praying when I walk out of my home that The Lord would open my eyes to those He places in my path each day so I am searching for who I share Him with, not IF I share Him. And Second, I believe that if The Lord wished me to pray with that homeless man, or tell him Jesus’ story, the Spirit who is alive with in me would have prompted me IN the moment, not later on in a spirit of condemnation. I could be wrong on that second point, perhaps the Spirit was prompting me and I did not listen. But usually when the Spirit moves in me I can not deny His presence, I know full well He is prompting me and I either clearly follow or deny that prompting.
So in my humble opinion, if you did not feel prompted IN the moment to share Jesus’ story with the man in the parking lot of TJ’s, but you did feel prompted to provide for his physical needs (sharing Jesus’ brotherly love), then you gave that man exactly what The Lord wished him to have.
And on a much more temporal level I also am smitten with Trader Joe’s!
With you, Karen. Yes, I really was praying in the moment with the man (inside), but this whole giving stuff/money is getting to me. It’s necessary, but incomplete. The power piece in our Western culture is missing. REAL power. Not the power of our intellect and our material resources, but the power of GOD through us. Thanks for engaging with me.