Imagine the Possibilities

Good Tuesday morning, my friends.

I was reading a devotional on the Men of Integrity website yesterday and came across this:

Imagine the Possibilities 

What if just half of those Americans who claim to be evangelical Christians were truly to practice their faith in their local communities as responsible citizens?

Every volunteer social organization in the country seeking to meet the needs of less fortunate people would be transformed overnight. There'd be so many volunteers they'd have to be put on waiting lists.

The databases of crisis pregnancy centers and prison transition ministries and foster-care agencies would be crammed with the names and numbers of families ready to take in young women and ex-cons and children who need hospitality, practical help, and loving care. Food pantry shelves would overflow. Homebound senior citizens would never be isolated. School children would have mentors for literacy programs and reading enrichment, and adults committed to staying involved in their lives. Nursing-home residents wouldn't pass time in empty days, neglected by family and ignored by society.

Even those not influenced to accept Christ by such radical, positive changes in society would live better lives.

(Written by Richard Land who has served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission since 1988.)

For me, this ties in with the notion that "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress" (James 1:27) and "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." (James 1:22)

So why is the above not happening (in Canada as well as the US)?  What is holding us back?  My guess, based on some self-examination, is our fear of losing the comforts we have come to claim as our own.  We feel we are "entitled to our entitlements" to quote a now infamous politician.  The problem, of course, is that there is no Biblical support for our position.  Nowhere in the Bible are we promised a life of comfort, but we are promised that if we support the widows and orphans that we will build up treasure in heaven.  

What do you think would happen if we prayed for less comfort and more opportunities to share what we have?  Just askin'!

Amazing Grace and Eternal Peace to you today.

Bruce

 Keep falsehood and lies far from me; 

       give me neither poverty nor riches, 

       but give me only my daily bread.

 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you 

       and say, 'Who is the LORD ?' 

       Or I may become poor and steal, 

       and so dishonor the name of my God.  (Proverbs 30:8-9)

Bruce MacPherson macpherson@celtic.ca