Text: Philippians 2.1-11
Desperate poverty was a common experience of widows in male-dominated Eastern culture. Some days would’ve been unbearably difficult for women who had no husband, son, or brother to take care of them. Amazingly, Tabitha enters their distress and gives her life to reduce the misery in her community. While her simple acts of service meet practical needs, the result is much more—her clothing is a vehicle to pierce through a lonely and hurting world to offer women dignity, warmth, and hope.
In West Michigan, we don’t often encounter or experience desperate poverty. Yet it’s possible to find people in our community in a desperate state of poverty in their soul. At one time, we all must confess to desperate spiritual poverty before God because we all need his dignity, warmth, and hope. Because Jesus is God’s vehicle to pierce through our lonely and hurting places, he now calls us to do the same.
As Tabitha uses her simple life to meet the needs of her community, she resembles a good God who responds to our desperate need. Like Tabitha, we can become conduits of God’s love as our acts of service become a way of dispensing his love, dignity, and hope.
Praise God for the love you receive from him, and for opportunities you have to dispense his love, as you listen to Jason Grey’s “With Every Act of Love.”
