Who's My Neighbor? A Biblical Call To Love OthersSample

Marbles or Grapes?

Dr. Keith Newman

Years ago, I loaned my car to my brother. This wasn’t just any car...it was a beautiful midnight blue Chevrolet Corvette! I placed all kinds of restrictions on when and where he could drive this vehicle that I so highly valued. Guess what he did? He wrecked it! Actually, it wasn’t his fault, but an uninsured driver ran a red light and hit him. My brother was fine. The car was totaled. I was mad…more than just a little miffed, but God used those days to teach me about the power of possessions.

Are you good at sharing? It is one of the first lessons we are typically taught. For some people, it comes easier than others. Most of us have at least one friend that would share any of their possessions, and then there is also someone in our community that keeps a much tighter grip on anything they own.

These pioneers in the early church understood that they didn’t really own anything. God owns it all. When they took a quick inventory of their lives, they decided that pooling their assets made sense, and they created a sharing community. Would you have been comfortable in this community, with no possessions being your own and sharing everything you have?

I think I would struggle in that kind of group. I want to be generous, and I understand that nothing I own is really my own, but sharing everything? Seems kind of radical to me, and my selfish spirit can quickly creep in. These days we don’t have many communities that share all their possessions, and the truth is we don’t have many communities that are one in heart and mind. But this passage teaches me a great truth:

People are more important than possessions.  Always.

I love what Anne Ortlund wrote about communities of faith:  “You can choose to be a bag of marbles, single units that don’t affect each other except in collision…or you can choose to be a bag of grapes. The juices begin to mingle, and there is no way to extricate yourselves if you tried. Each is part of all.”