Day 011: Boundaries

"And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning.  Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, 'John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.'  If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?" Acts 11:15-17

The great thing about having access to the book of Acts and the letters of the early church is that we can see how interpretation and explanation of the Gospel took form in the beginning.  We also have help in understanding the often difficult words that Jesus spoke.

Here, Peter made a profound discovery during a visit he made with some Gentiles earlier: that God extended all the same gifts of the Holy Spirit to everyone and not just the Jews.  And this caused lots of resistance from those who were Christians because they thought the gifts would be reserved just for them, those who had descended from Abraham, those who had been educated in the traditional Jewish laws.  Even Peter had to put aside his reservations.

Today, in the study notes in the Orthodox Study Bible about Abraham sending away Hagar and Ishmael, I learned that it was through faith that people could claim to be sons of Abraham, for Abraham bore many different nations aside from the Jews.  Historically speaking, there are Jews who claim descent from Isaac and Muslims who claim descent from Ishmael - so many people.

We, as humans, are prone to set boundaries and borders on things that we claim as ours.  We like to say that people related to us by blood are our family (well, except for that one aunt who says mean things; and my best friend there has been so great to us that he's practically part of the family).  Nations draw borders all the time, and they can cause issues, such as an abundance of enclaves and exclaves, or strife between tribes who never wanted to be with each other.  Our politicians draw borders in the United States in order to say which people belong to each other, not only by location but also by political affiliation, to the chagrin of the American people and some judges.  Our churches draw borders between who are welcome and who are not, depending on things as knowledge, experience, or custom.

The beautiful thing about the gifts of God, though, is that they transcend all our boundaries, even when we don't like it.  God uses this as a way to teach us to love one another and to see our neighbors as friends and not foes.  God's unconditional love is something that we will always struggle to understand, but it is something that we always have the opportunity to receive in our hearts.

P.S.  From now on, I will include the readings I am following.  I devised a reading plan for my personal use, and I can probably write a little more about it another time.  For the Psalms, I use the Septuagint numeration; the Masoretic (more common in the United States) numeration will be in brackets.  Today's readings are:
Genesis 21-22
Psalm 9:22-32 (10:1-11)
Proverbs 5:15-23
Matthew 8:18-9:8
Acts 11