Dear readers;
Thank you for your prayers for my eyes. I had my surgery on July 14 and, after a recovery period of nearly two weeks, the vision in my left eye has ben fully restored. Even though the vision in my right eye is still quite distorted, and likely will be for the rest of my life barring a miracle (which God can do. Keep praying!), I can now function much better, and can get back to reading and writing at my former level. I am forever grateful to God for helping the doctors discover ways to fix what went wrong with my eyes, procedures that didn’t exist even 20 or 30 years ago. And I am thankful as well for my doctor through whose hands God has provided this great benefit to me.
With that being said, here is today’s blog:
Read with Me
James 2:5-7 (HCSB)
Listen, my dear brothers: Didn’t God choose the poor in this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that He has promised to those who love Him? Yet you dishonored that poor man. Don’t the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Don’t they blaspheme the noble name that was pronounced over you at your baptism?
Listen with Me
James had just pointed out how morally wrong it was for the Christians to show respect (and lack of respect) to others based on their appearance, treating those in nice clothes with honor and those in shabby clothes with disdain. But now he focuses on the fact that it is logically wrong as well.
He begins by pointing out that it tended to be the poor who were the most devout people. They had few material goods to rely on for security and comfort, so they had to rely solely on God to provide for them and to keep them safe and well. They were the ones whom Jesus had pronounced bless, and to whom he had promised the kingdom in Luke 6:20. But He had also declared that it was practically impossible for the rich to inherit the kingdom of God (Luke 18:24-27), because many, like the rich young ruler, were so bound up with their possessions that those things had quickly become gods in their lives.
But now the children of the kingdom, many of whom were poor themselves, were fawning over the rich and notable people who came to their services and showing open scorn to those who were poor or of little account. James is further amazed because those same rich people to whom the Christians were showing such deference were the very ones who were exploiting them, paying them starvation wages for their work, charging exorbitant interest, and even dragging them to court, taking what little they had over fine points of the law.
James is not advocating turning a cold shoulder to these wealthy people. After all, they needed the salvation that can only come through Jesus as much as anyone. What he is urging is that there be level ground in the Church, with no one lifted up merely for being well-dressed and well-positioned in society, and no one pushed back or pushed down merely for lacking those things. In God’s kingdom, He is the King, and all others are on level ground below him. All are brothers and sisters of Christ, sinners deserving of death but saved by grace, each given spiritual gifts and graces to be used in the kingdom work of making disciples of all nations. There are no “classes” of people in God’s kingdom, thus there should be no class distinctions in His Church.
Pray with Me
Father, we are sadly just as prone to this error as those in James’ day were. We are excited and even flattered when wealthy people visit our churches, seeing them as potential large donors. At the same time, those who come in shabby clothes we tend to see, at best, as projects for compassionate ministries or, at worst, as a drain on the church’s resources. We don’t look beyond the outward appearance to see the lost soul that may be hidden beneath the designer clothes and brilliantly shined shoes, or the powerful saint and prayer warrior clothed much more humbly. Forgive us, Lord, for too often being “judges with evil thoughts” (James 2:4) instead of seeing the hearts of these people, seeing them as You do. Amen.