Random thought for the day...
Acts 20:35
"In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' "
Interesting line, that is only from Paul quoting Christ. It's not even in the Gospel of Thomas as far as I could read...
If we are Blessed by God though, we are blessed with a purpose. Be are Blessed to receive things from God, that is our Blessing. We receive as His children, the benefit of wisdom, or forgiveness, etc. We are called to then give which in turn will result in the more blessing, the greater blessing. The blessings on top of blessings.
Only by giving can we achieve the upper echelon of the Blessings in store for us.
2 comments:
The thing that gets me about this verse is that Paul is saying, "Look at me! Be like me!" instead of "Be like Christ." Maybe it's just my inner editorial board, but it's really badly phrased. I mean, "In everything I did, I showed you...." is awfully pretentious. I have a hard time taking Paul seriously because of things like this.
Poor Paul! I think the nature of the verse is more like: I am showing you how to act in a better way, because Christ said this. It's like Christ's words are directing Paul to act, and Paul is asking everyone to act the same.
It's a little bit of a phraseing problem i agree. I mean, it's like the guy was writing in another language thousands of years ago or something. Jeezy Creezy. ;-)
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