Reading Isaiah 55 recently, I was particularly struck by the opening couple of verses: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.”
This reflects the heart of what we want to do with the Time2 house - we don’t want anyone to be excluded from staying with us due to a lack of finances! We want to be available for the thirsty and tired leaders to come and rest, relax and be looked after without worrying about whether they can afford it.
As I pondered on these verses over the following 24 hours, I was left feeling frustrated that we don’t have the resources to purchase the house yet. Yes, I said the house! We believe that we’ve found the property, actually we didn’t find it, it found us. A prayer partner saw it and felt they should send us the details, after praying about it, we contacted the owners, who are Christian’s and have been running it as a retreat for around 10 years. We shared with them our position, but they were still keen for us to view it, which we did. The viewing turned into a long chat about our vision and ended with a time of prayer about 2.25 hours later. Having contacted them since, they feel that we’re the right people to be custodians of the house. This is all exciting news, but is a real test of faith, particularly as other people are viewing the house!
The morning after reading Isaiah 55, I was using the Lectio365 app, the title of the reflection was ‘Radical Generosity’, I read this quote from the late Dr Timothy Keller, “While secular individualism says that your money belongs to you … the Bible says that all your money belongs to God, who then entrusts it to you … you have moral obligations to both God and your neighbour to use your money unselfishly and with great generosity to love others with it, according to both your ability and to their needs.”
I was challenged that radical generosity is different from generosity or tithing! So, how radical are we with the money we’ve been entrusted with?
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