Tiny Devotional for Tuesday, 10-19-2021
A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, sausage-pancake, on a stick.
And every person is a friend to him who gives gifts.
All the brothers of a poor person hate him;
How much more do his friends abandon him!
He pursues them with words, but they are gone.
Proverbs 19:6-7, NASB
The rich and the poor both understand that money attracts, and poverty repels; but money isn’t the whole story. The words describing the conflict are: favor, friend, brothers, hate, abandon.
Those aren’t “money” words; they are relationship words.
I once overheard a father complain that his daughter, who lived in a different state, only contacted him when she needed money.
Even though I was just a kid at the time, I realized that his problem wasn’t money; it was that he desired a closer relationship.
If he had said what was really on his heart, it would probably have sounded like this:
“I’m grateful that I can do SOMETHING for my daughter; I just wish it was more than writing a check.”
Long distances are murder on relationships, and with increased age comes increased difficulty in travel. FaceTime and Zoom have limits: you can’t smell a baby’s hair, give a hug, or share a plate of food over a smartphone, and keyboards don’t have a “LOVE” key.
(Mine has a “CONTROL” key, but it doesn’t work; and besides LOVE≠CONTROL.)
In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul writes of love between churches in Macedonia and Corinth being hampered by distance. Partial solution: send money.
It’s a poor second best to being there, but sometimes that’s all we can do.
Peace be on your household.
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