James 2:14-17
“So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
(James 2:17)
In reading today’s full text, my mind wandered some eight thousand miles to the small Indian villages I visited with Leena Levana and our team on a recent ServeTrust mission trip. Every day we encountered children and adults whose needs were often overwhelming.
Leena’s passion to share the gospel is multi-faceted, reaching to exemplify the love of Christ to the total person. “How can I tell them about the Bread of Life,” she told us, “if I don’t help feed their empty stomachs.” I have affirmed over the years this broader perspective of reaching out in Jesus' name, but I had never seen it exemplified more powerfully. HIV/AIDS patients, hungry children, those without good dental hygiene, those who had perhaps never had a pair of shoes of their own, those bound in the horror of the sex trade, those who had been cast aside because they were elderly or infirmed, those whose lives had been turned upside down by the devastating fire at the railroad yard…all of these people witnessed the love of Jesus not simply through a preacher who stood on the street corner and talked, but by someone who tirelessly worked to heal and feed and clothe and liberate and embrace them in the midst of their need.
The Message translates our focal passage with stunning clarity: “Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?” I didn’t have to travel 8,000 miles to find evidence of this truth, but I am surely glad I did.
Prayer: God of one, God of all, give us compassion and courage that our God-talk may be accompanied by God-acts. Amen.
Jim Abernathy
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