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Topic: Poor (10/25/04)
TITLE: God Watches Over His Word By Annette Agnello 10/26/04 |
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I was in a women’s group where I met Isabel. The group members had all received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and we were reading, and discussing and trying to learn more. We were all reading our Bibles religiously.
Isabel was an interesting lady. I had estimated her age at least 20 years younger than she was. This came out when she started talking about her children. Isabel was the mother of two sets of twins. The first, two sons, had been her first husband’s; the two daughters, her second husband’s. We learned her first husband had been wounded France in WWII. He made it back to the states, but never actually home. She was left with two small boys, she had raised until nearly grown before she found her second husband. By the time I met her the twin girls from the second marriage were grown and on their own too. It didn’t take much math to see that she was a lot older than I thought.
All of her life experiences prepared Isabel to fight for what was right wherever she saw it. She was fearless to the point of taking on a visiting priest for teaching wrong.
I grant I didn’t see what happened but like the rest of the women in our study group I saw Isabel when she got there. She was indignant.
“I went to hear the guest speaker at church today. He was supposed to be so very good. He was terrible.”
“What exactly went wrong?”
“ He used little pieces of scriptures, cutting out whatever got in his way. He pieced things together to say whatever he wanted to say. You wouldn’t believe how he twisted things.
He was teaching from the Beatitudes, and used pieces of the verses and left out the meaning of the verses. What got me angry most is what he did with the verse “blessed are the poor” that’s all the verse he used he left out “In Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ” the man didn’t include God in the picture, or heaven. At the end of the service I went up to talk to him about how he extolled poverty out of context, I mentioned the half of the scripture he left out... Do you know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said, “That’s good too.” He’s making scriptures whatever he wants it to be, cutting and pasting into a crazy quilt.”
In the Bible they did talk about being poor. But it also talked about God blessing you and bringing you out of poverty. God is very concerned over the smallest needs he does provide for needs.