The Pizza Connection

I once read somewhere that the reason the Bible is so powerful is because the stories that happened then  happen now; right here and now to real people. Have you ever paused while reading your Bible because you realize that you are one of the characters in the story that you are reading?I'm sure it has happened to all of you at one point or another: At one point in our lives we have all been Adam and Eve eating the fruit in the garden, we have all been Jonah avoiding God's commands, we have all had our own Goliath's, and let's not forget Peter loosing faith while walking on the water. But how many times have we been able to relate to the Macedonian Church that Paul speaks about in II Corinthians chapter 8; "And now brothers we want you to know about the grace that God gave the Macedonian churches. Out of their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own." How many times in your life, and if you have never done this you are amazing, have you not given money to a charity because if you gave them money you wouldn't be able to go out and eat or go to the movies or the one that I struggle with buying a new pair of shoes. Is that steak, or sitting in the theater for ninety minutes, or that new pair of shoes worth clean drinking water, an education, food, shelter, and/or clothing for someone you have never met before? I won't answer that question for you because I trust you all know deep down inside what the correct answer is. In his book Amazing Grace, Jonathan Kozol, tells a story about a little boy who shares pizza with a homeless man. Kozol asks the boy if his parents were angry with him for sharing their pizza. The boy looks at him with a confused face and says "Why would they be mad? God told us to share!" By now you are sitting there at your computer or phone or wherever you happen to be reading this trying to figure out what pizza has to do with the Macedonian churches. Would it help if I told you that the child in the story is a seven year old boy named Cliffe who lives in the South Bronx. For those of you who don't know anything about the South Bronx it is one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States . It is the deadliest prescient of NY. Death, disease, and drugs run rampant. The pizza that Cliffie's mother sent him to get was more than likely the only thing the family would be eating that day. One slice of pizza, I don't know about you but one slice of pizza is not enough to get me through the day. And yet this seven year old boy living in extreme poverty shared with a homeless man. If we gave Cliffie the passage in II Corinthians that speaks of the Macedonian Churches he would relate to the people of those churches who were in extreme poverty. The question I leave you with, the question we need to ask ourselves is "Am I like the people of the Macedonian Churches or am I like the farmer who hoarded his crops?"
Go in PEACE. Live PEACE. Be PEACE.