Get Busy
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Good News Translation (GNT)
7 You are so rich in all you have: in faith, speech, and knowledge, in your eagerness to help and in your love for us. And so we want you to be generous also in this service of love.
8 I am not laying down any rules. But by showing how eager others are to help, I am trying to find out how real your own love is.9 You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; rich as he was, he made himself poor for your sake, in order to make you rich by means of his poverty.
10 My opinion is that it is better for you to finish now what you began last year. You were the first, not only to act, but also to be willing to act.11 On with it, then, and finish the job! Be as eager to finish it as you were to plan it, and do it with what you now have.12 If you are eager to give, God will accept your gift on the basis of what you have to give, not on what you don't have.
13-14I am not trying to relieve others by putting a burden on you; but since you have plenty at this time, it is only fair that you should help those who are in need. Then, when you are in need and they have plenty, they will help you. In this way both are treated equally.15 As the scripture says,
The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.
The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.
Facing a question or problem and being indecisive about what to do, people sometimes put the Bible in the lap, close the eyes, open the Bible and point to a verse. The sought answer may be right there at the fingertips. If not, the custom is to do it over and again until a verse “fits.” Or until we find an answer we like, or one that rationalizes whatever we wanted to do in the first place.
Here’s one of our lessons for Sunday, July 1, as our Second Reading continues to work through 2 Corinthians. It is not often, in my experience, that a Sunday reading can so obviously be lifted out of context directly into almost anyone’s life situation. But this one can, urging us to generosity and kindness in whatever is going on in life, and to finish things that we have started and allowed to lapse. So, vice versa for a change, here is a ready answer seeking a problem or question, instead of the other way round.
My use of it may be to straighten up my desk and do the things in my “in box” there. Or, one of my bad habits is to have several books going at a time, read partway through a book and put it down, open and read some of another book, and another, and another, and never get round to finishing any of them: maybe this bit of Scripture will encourage me to finish some of the dozen or so half-read books in various rooms of the house here, or in my Kindle library, where Walden and many others are enjoyed but unfinished and will open to wherever I left off. In my hospital room at Cleveland Clinic, January 2011, I was reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Kindle will open it where I left off then, several chapters from the end.
Or maybe the 2 Corinthians reading will inspire me to get back to something useful instead of procrastinating. Potato vines in the azaleas. Mess in the storage attic. Hebrew. Syllabus and lesson plans for Fall 2012 Sunday School and Tuesday morning Bible seminar. Sermon for this coming Sunday.
From a historical-critical perspective, Second Corinthians is thought to be a composite of some six different writings. This piece (all of chapter 8), seems to be part of a letter Paul is sending along with Titus, authorizing and commending Titus to organize a collection of money, maybe to help the church in Jerusalem. Can’t tell what, if anything, this segment has to do with other parts of Second Corinthians.
TW+