Discovering talents for God’s kingdom
Charity relieves a hardship for a week. Ability changes what a family can do for the next twenty years. That is the argument, and Indian churches are sitting on the resources to act on it.
The outrage lasts about a fortnight. Then the protests thin out, the panel discussions move on, and the country goes back to chalta hai until the next one is brutal enough to interrupt us.
There is no lecture in that passage. No list of reasons he should keep going, no reminder of who was depending on him. An angel touched him and said the journey was too much for him, which it was.
The illustration works. The trouble is what we usually do with it, which is to tell people to press the brake harder and then act surprised when they cannot.
Twelve men watched bread multiply in their own hands at lunchtime. By three in the morning they were rowing into a headwind and frightened out of their wits. Mark tells you exactly why.
Flags, the anthem, the telecast from the Red Fort. Then a year in which a girl was surrounded outside a bar in Guwahati and an infant died in Punjab over two hundred rupees.
Somebody has told you that you are good for nothing. Matthew 25 does not open with what the servants produced. It opens with what they were handed.
