When someone steals from you, you feel violated. The morning I woke up and went to get in my car which was parked beside my parents’ house and found no car to get in, I was dumbfounded, I was angry, I was heart-broken, all at once. Often we see people steal the dreams or the spirit from another. We do it with a thoughtless word, a mean-spirited act, an emotional reaction. Worse still, we steal from God. From the book of Malachi, preachers are fond of teaching tithing. But I have discovered that the thing we steal most often from God has nothing to do with the money we do or do not give. Rather, it is when we destroy our own witness or the witness of others, when we neglect to share the gospel with those around us, or when we decide to allow our personal preferences control our responses in church. It is easier to bad-mouth what we don’t like (especially in others) than it is to concentrate on our own responsibility. When we do this we steal from each other, we steal from ourselves, and we steal from God.
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on 08 November 2006
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