More Word Worries
Matthew 6: 25-34
Exodus 16: 11-32
I shared with you the word privilege and its many meanings. I have two more words that keep coming to my attention, enable and entitle. They are double meaning words like privilege. To enable Haywood to feed so many people God has put in many people’s hearts the need to give. This enabling builds up the community that receives as well as those who give and that is good all round. What we don’t want to do is enable people to receive and think the gifts of food and clothing come from people when they really come through people from God. This sort of enabling hurts people by making them dependent on institutions or other people, denying them freedom to trust God, rest in his love (grace), and respond with gratitude. When we enable in a negative way, we diminish others by saying they are not able to be the person God created them to be, that we are in control, not God and not the person.
My other worry word is entitled. If we work each day and it is agreed that the man who hired us will pay us, then we are entitled to what we agreed upon. However, if someone takes what they have not earned, we often say he is acting entitled and the benefit is not based on reality. The entitled man is not trusting God for what he needs, but instead he takes what he needs without thought of others because he thinks he has the right over others.
“Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well,” says Jesus. We don’t have to be entitled or enabled. God provides daily what we need out of His abundant love (grace).
Now that is the hard part. In the Lord’s prayer Jesus teaches us to say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He does not say give us tomorrow’s bread. In the Exodus, God sent manna to His people in the desert when they were hungry. God told Moses to tell the people they were to gather only as much as they needed for each day except on the sixth day they could gather enough for two days so they could rest on the Sabbath, the seventh day. Some gathered two days worth when they were not supposed to. It molded and was inedible.
God gives us all that we need if we trust Him. We don’t have to act entitled and take more than we need or enable others to act entitled. God loves us without qualification and he gives abundantly. My two worry words are not necessary to understand God’s plan for us. Trust, receive, thank Him, and share. Rest in that knowledge.
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