Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, June 3, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
When did we decide that this wasn’t the best way to live? When did Christians abandon this communal living, in which all were mutually supportive, in which each gave according to their ability and each were helped according to their need?
I have a young adult in my life who needs a lot of help. She has extreme executive functioning issues, mental health challenges, and a variety of seemingly minor physical quirks which all combine to make it hard for her to “adult” in the pathologically independent way all Americans are assumed to want and be fully capable of. She feels a great deal of guilt and shame that she isn’t doing the things her same-age peers are doing, and worries she’ll never amount to anything.
Oh, honey.
When did we decide that it was okay to marginalize and shame people who don’t fit into a narrow idea of what “normal” is? How beautiful would it be if we still followed the Christian “Way of Jesus” in which they shared all things in common, and loved and supported each other in whatever need they might have? And…is there any way to get back there? For the sake of this young woman and so many thousands more like her?
What is my experience with the ideas of independence and interdependence?
