February 19, 2015
Concern For Each Other
The Johnsons moved into my centrally
located neighborhood because they didn’t drive and they could walk to the
grocery store, the doctor’s office and the downtown stores. The Johnsons had no
children and their only living relatives were two long-distance elderly
cousins. When Mr. Johnson died his widow stayed in the small house until she
was forced to move into an assisted living facility. Over the years Mrs. Johnson
would call me to chat and I knew she wanted us to keep a neighborly relationship
going. However, my plate was full caring for two people in my own family and I didn’t have the energy for another care-giving type of responsibility. Recently
a legal notice was placed in the newspaper that Mrs. Johnson passed away,
apparently some weeks ago. I find it sad that there was no death notice or obituary,
and that we in the church community didn’t even realize that we’d lost a body
part. “But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor
to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no
division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each
other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if
one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (1 Cor 12:24b-26 NIV).
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Gail;
-----A lot of implications can be drawn from the fact that we live imperfectly in an imperfect place. This means our abilities are also imperfect. It’s all part of the curse. Like you pointed out, we’re not able to do everything. This is part of what the body is about. By showing how tightly we are connected as body parts which hurt together, the Scripture you quoted highlights the importance of serving one another. Matthew 25:40 underscores it; Psalm 44:21b double underscores it, “For He knows the secrets of the heart.” If He knows the secrets of every heart, He knows the stirrings caused in one heart by the actions of another heart, or lack thereof, and feels them at least as much as the hurting heart (or rejoicing heart.) So I like to think of the people around me as tablets or canvas for writing or painting messages to the Lord. And those messages stand out more vividly when the writing or painting is the fulfilling of a real need.
-----So why do we just walk past people we don’t know as if they were another can alongside the road? The reasons are numerous. But one is rather common, one that people don’t want to even think about, and therefore don’t notice the reality of its logic in their thinking. When we are enjoying sufficiency, knowing another person’s insurmountable problems either bids our generosity or exposes our lack of it. Doing the former cuts into our sufficiency. We don’t want that. Holding tightly our sufficiency engages the latter. Nor do we want that. Since one or the other must happen, we have a tendency to not want to know so that we won‘t feel either happen (though the latter is happening.) Thereby the unknown can gets kicked on down the road without summoning a feeling of guilt.
-----One part of suffering at the suffering of another involves more than empathetic, emotional distress. It can also be (and probably more often should be) the loss of sufficiency when generosity is engaged at having seen the emptiness of a can alongside the road. Generosity cuts into its own sufficiency to fill it. Many have such great sufficiency they hardly notice any is missing after being generous. But when they have unresponsively walked past a can, it is usually others who will hurt afterward who yet fill up the can. This feels extra good to the Lord, not because He’s sadistic in wanting one to hurt in giving, but because the giving was willingly done in spite of the penalty of post-generosity poverty.
-----The more the sacrificial man allows himself to see, the more he gets whittled away. Christ was sacrificial. He also had perfect vision. And He had the sufficiency to fill up all us cans with eternal life. But the filling of us all expended His temporal life completely. Then the mind of Christ partly involves such expense, hurting with those who hurt - the expense of sight - even unto death.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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