Broken Ladder

Acts 4:32-35

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own
• they had everything in common
• great grace was upon them all
• distributed to each as any had need

Applying the Word to My Life:
I've been blessed to have the chance to do some pretty great things in my life. At one point I was part of the office of the CEO at my company. I was part of the group where the decisions got made, running the business day to day. At that point there really wasn't any more "up" left to chase. And I still wasn't happy. I wasn't the father I wanted to be. I wasn't the husband I wanted to be either.

Luke says the early church never had that problem, not because they had less, but because nobody in it claimed what he owned was actually his own. People who owned land or houses sold them and laid the money at the apostles' feet, and it went to whoever had need. I was doing the opposite for years - gathering, holding on tighter with each promotion, certain that this next raise, this next title, would finally be the one that settled something in me.

It never was. Whatever you finally get your hands on, the same problems are still standing there waiting for you. You just face them now with a bigger title, a bigger paycheck, maybe a little more authority. I know that cycle because I lived it, year after year, always one rung short of whatever I thought I actually needed.

What changed wasn't my position. It was learning to trust God with it - the same trust that let those first believers hold their land and their houses loose enough to hand them over. The possessions and the title stopped being mine to hold onto. They became gifts, on loan, meant to be spent on other people. The problems didn't disappear. They just stopped being the whole story.

That's what I think Luke means by nobody claiming what they had as their own. It's not that the believers had less. It's that they'd stopped needing it to be theirs.

You don't need an office of the CEO to fall into the same trap. It might be a bank balance, a house, a reputation, or just being right about something - whatever you're quietly convinced would finally settle things if you could just get a little more of it. The invitation isn't to have less. It's to hold whatever you've got loosely enough that it can actually be spent on someone else who needs it even more.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll look for one moment to give something that matters to me to someone who needs it more.