“And she just made us come” ~ Acts 16:15c, Berkeley
Here is a tiny but potent streak of color in this “pleasant stone” fragment which I [Eugenia Price, the author] cannot resist sharing with you. The King James version reads: “And she constrained us.”
Now most people know how to give gifts and kindnesses. I know from experience that this is true, because for all the years of my Christian life, God’s people have showered me with kindness, and almost all of it “had no strings attached” whatever. But being showered with kindness is one thing and being stormed with “kindness” is another!
Perhaps Lydia, as we said of her yesterday, did become a “lifter” at once. But God’s humor comes through His saints in the Bible now and then, and it could be that Luke smiled and clapped a hand to his head when he wrote: “… she just made us come.” Now and then someone invites us to dinner with such urgency that we somehow feel guilty if we refuse.
It is a joy to meet God’s relaxed saints who can receive your refusal of their kindness as graciously as they offer it to you in the first place. For the sake of those who led Lydia to a knowledge of Jesus Christ as her own personal Saviour, I sincerely hope she was one of those who “joined the team” immediately.
I quite agree “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” But it might be well now and then if those of us who insist upon “being more blessed” would take the lesser blessing. Especially if we are determined to “give” our newest culinary creation or an evening of our favorite home movies to someone who is tired and would rather be alone and not eat at all.
“Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy.”
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