Due

“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it”  Proverbs 3:27

Due – What does a heathen god have to do with owning a house or marrying a wife?  If you can answer that question, read no further.  If you don’t know, read on.  The common connection is that all of these things use the same Hebrew root word – ba’al.  The sense of this word seems to be ownership, possession or right of loyalty.  So, Baal, the heather god worshipped by the Israelites during the time of the judges, was a god who demanded loyalty and possession.  The same idea is present in Exodus 22:8 (owning a house) and Deuteronomy 24:1 (marrying a wife).  It’s about who owns what.

This verse really reads, “Do not withhold good from those who own it”.  So the natural question is this,  “Who owns good?”  The context of this verse in Proverbs may surprise you.  The owner of “good” is not the one who is a shining example of spiritual devotion.  It’s not the minister or the missionary or the philanthropist.  It’s not the most moral, the most giving or the most deserving.  Take a look at Leviticus 19:18 and you will see who the owner of “good” is.  It is your neighbor.  The one within your community.  The one close at hand.  The companion.  And guess who uses this same thought in a most dramatic way in the New Testament?  Now you know the context of the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Your neighbor is the one whom God places in your path today.

Why do neighbors own the good we can provide?  If you see the picture from a little larger perspective, you will realize that the neighbor is God’s deliberately provided opportunity for you to reflect His compassion.  God intends us to leave His fingerprints in our closest communities.  Those whom God places in our immediate community are the ones who see us as we are.  They know if our acts of kindness are motivated by charity or by recognition.  Neighbors “own” the good we can do for them because they are God’s possibilities given to us in human form.  God’s self-definition (Exodus 34:6) tells us how He would act.  The question is whether or not we will do the same.

We say, “Charity begins at home”.  That often means we reserve our acts of kindness for those we care most about.  Charity does being at home.  But it begins with the neighbor – the one God puts before you today.  Are you God’s fingerprint in that life?

Today:  Who is my neighbor?  Today I will ask God to reveal a neighbor to me in order that I may give her what she owns – my compassion and goodness.