Wednesday after the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity Sunday

Scripture: St. Luke 14:12-15 (NKJV)

12 Then He also said to him who invited Him, “When you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbors, lest they also invite you back, and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. 14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” 15 Now when one of those who sat at the table with Him heard these things, he said to Him, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!”

Devotion

“You will be blessed,” Jesus says…because you will have treated others in a way that shows that you understand how God has treated you.

God’s mercy is not repayable, and He does not look for us to repay Him. Instead, our works are the reflection of what we believe. If we have confidence in our Lord to take care of us, we do not steal—neither openly as common thieves, nor as those who steal from our employers by laziness, our employees by not paying decent wages, our customers by having bad products or services or making false claims about our goods or selling them things they don’t need, and so on. Instead, we may be charitable with what He has given, reckoning it to be His property, still, rather than our own—using those resources wisely, to be sure, to benefit those to whom we give, rather than establishing them in profligacy, but without the thought of our own benefit in so doing.

The poor (having nothing to offer), the maimed (not able to work, perhaps rejected by society due to how they “appear”), the lame (not able to get where they need to go), the blind (cannot see where they need to go)…these are all descriptors of every human being’s spiritual condition by birth nature. According to your flesh, you would neither know (see) what to give to God nor have any means to give anything to Him or do anything for Him. Yet, He has given you a seat at His table, supplying you forgiveness and the righteousness you lack, through the obedience of Christ “even unto death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:5-11)

Heavenly Father, grant us to give as You have given us, that for our works men may glorify You, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.