The other day my wife and I were driving into downtown Indianapolis on our way to have dinner celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary. We had a baby sitter and it was one of those rare occasions for parents of 2 little ones to go out alone and have an adult evening.
As we were pulling off I465 onto Keystone Ave in a fairly upscale part of town a woman stood at stop sigh with her cardboard sign asking for help for her and her hungry children. There are often beggars at this stop sign but I don’t think I have seen a woman before.
As we slowly creped forward toward her behind a long line of cars I tried to start some sort of conversation with my wife to take my attention off of her and for God’s sake not make eye contact.
I remembered the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:42 “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” but all I had was twenty dollar bills and besides I told myself that she was certainly a scammer who probably makes 50 grand a year doing this.
I told myself anything it took to make me feel better and you can imagine how relieved I felt to have moved past her and be back on our way to the fancy restaurant to celebrate our marriage. Besides, didn’t Christ say that we would always have the poor with us, we can help them anytime but sometimes there are more important things? Right?
This same episode has happened more than once in my life. I can justify it all day and actually can think of really good reasons for not giving any cash to the beggars with cardboard signs. May God and that woman forgive me.
I just didn’t feel called. That is a common answer for about anything we do or don’t want to do in the area of following Christ. At least it has often been true for me. I find it amusing that I so often use that excuse even when the call is already there in the Bible.
Matthew 5:42 “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
Maybe we should have a 6 week intensive Bible study group to ascertain the proper interpretation of these words in red (yes, I am being sarcastic). But that is exactly what we see in most churches and could very well be the response of many Christians. Why can’t we just do what Jesus says. The Bible is very simple and extremely clear here. We pretend it needs some scholarly study but it doesn’t. I am convinced we only do that because actually living out the commands of Jesus is too uncomfortable. So we make excuses based on Christian living and education.
This is my struggle with the Christian church in our country and more importantly with myself. May God give me the faith to follow Jesus and be obedient to His Word.