6 May, Monday — Doers

Monday of the 6th Week of Eastertide

Acts 16: 11-15
John 15:26-16:4

“If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my home”

Home. Such a private and personal space. This is where we are unguarded, where we let our defences down, unflex ourselves and move in the comfort of familiar routines and surroundings. Home is where most of us find our peace. Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days”. And though obligation, politeness and social grace require us to sometimes extend Mr Franklin’s three day limit, we do so with anxiety and consternation. I have hosted my share of houseguests over the years. And though I have gotten better at allowing others to invade my space, it is still that – an invasion. I am not so evolved or enlightened that it does not cause me anxiety. It does, no matter how much I care for whoever is coming to stay.

Which brings us to Lydia’s story in today’s first reading. In the short description we are given of Lydia, we know she’s an anomaly of her time. She’s an entrepreneur, and the head of her household, despite the patriarchal conventions of her time. She’s wealthy, a “dealer in purple cloth”. Purple textile in Ancient Rome was a luxury item, requiring the laborious process of boiling thousands of snails to harvest the compounds that made purple dye. She is also a member of God’s early church, so an early adopter of new ways of thinking and being.

Lydia would be an anomaly of her time, even if she were alive today – someone who walks the talk, and unflinchingly. “Be doers of the Word and not just hearers, lest you deceive yourselves. The hearer who does not become a doer is like one who looked at himself in the mirror, and then promptly forgot what he was like. But those who fix their gaze on the perfect law of freedom and hold onto it, not listening and forgetting, but acting on it, will find blessing on their deeds”. (James 1:22-25). Allowing Paul to use her home as a base for his work, Lydia played an invaluable role in the growth of Christ’s church in Philippi. There is no record of the anxiety and upheaval of opening her home. We are told, simply, that she did it. No fuss or drama.

We will never see, in our lifetime, the plans God has for His people, or the part we are to play in their fruition. The kindnesses we extend, the inconveniences we endure, are seeds toward some greater purpose. God plays multi-dimensional chess, and from His vantage, great things can be achieved from the small moves we make today. We are not all like Lydia. I for one, fall very short of her example. But we can all aspire, and maybe attempt to it. Like all the minor individuals in the Bible, those with one or two lines to their name, these small acts, collectively, made possible the grand scale of God’s work through the ages. Let’s all think of individuals like Lydia, the next time we reflexively say ‘no’. Who knows what good may yet come of it. Let’s all aim to be not just ‘believers’ but also ‘doers’, so that we too can say, that we were there at the beginning.

“And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning” – John 15:27

(Today’s OXYGEN by Sharon Soo)

Prayer: We pray for the endurance, the grace, and the love to open our hearts and our spaces out to God’s purpose.  

Thanksgiving: We give thanks to all the people in our lives, who have said ‘Yes’, when we have needed help.