For two years, I spent significant time in the Dominican Republic, hosting teams of American missionaries and volunteers. On Fridays, at the end of their week serving, we would visit Dajabon to see the market. Twice a week, the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti was open for this kind of makeshift flea or farmers market. People were free to come and go to sell their goods and buy supplies.
We would walk through the crowded markets, wait on the bridge over the river that marks the border, between two of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, and, when we were done watching people in a literal life-and-death struggle for survival, we would walk back through the crowd towards our bus… and before we boarded the bus, we’d go into this little ice cream shop.
It was about three US dollars for a little cup of ice cream. My favorite was the brownie. It was three dollars for ice cream where three dollars could feed someone all week. The guilt makes the ice cream hard to swallow. What’s worse is that the local shoe shine boys had heard that the Americanos were visiting and they would come to see us.
“I’m hungry,” they would say in Spanish, “may I shine your shoes for 20 pesos (about sixty cents)? Por favor. I’m hungry.”
Of course, most of us were wearing sandals or tennis shoes. There was nothing to polish or shine, but for sixty cents they’d get down on their hands and knees and scrub the dust and dirt from your shoes with an old toothbrush, wax them, and polish them with a few drops of old shoe polish.
You know what I learned from the shoe shine boys? That they don’t really want pity or charity. They weren’t looking to get rich. The shoe shine boys just wanted dignity. They wanted to work. They wanted to earn a living 20 pesos at a time. Over and over again they would get down on the floor and tap my shoes and ask, “Please sir, I’m hungry. May I shine your shoes? Venty pesos. Venty pesos.”
So how much is enough?
Is twenty pesos enough to make you content? Is something to eat enough? Is a cup of brownie ice cream enough?
In 1 Timothy 6:8, Paul sets the bar for contentment pretty low. He wrote, “If we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.”
Food and clothing. That’s all.
When contentment for you requires more than that, you end up holding more tightly to those things. If contentment for you requires a car and a house and a computer and a cell phone and a fill in the blank, whatever it is… then won’t you hold more tightly to those things when you get them?
And if God took everything else away—like he did for Job—and gave you only food and clothing, would you be content with that?
For the early Christians, those believers facing persecution, often they were just happy to be alive.
And when they looked around their world, they saw that the widowed or divorced woman was unable to earn a living. Without the generosity of the church or someone who would take her as a wife, she might starve to death. It was a genuine need.
They saw that the orphaned or abandoned child had nothing. He had a genuine need for food, clothing, shelter.
They saw the fatherless. They saw the criminal. They saw the one who, for the sake of Christ, was rejected by their family. These people had nothing; they had genuine need.
So when they saw these needs, Acts 4:32 says, the church met them. They shared everything they had. Now, everything means everything. Content to have clothing and food, content to be alive and a part of God’s kingdom, they shared everything they had.
You need to borrow my truck? Use it. You need a place to stay? You’re welcome. You need anything? Everything I have… it belongs to God anyway, you’re free to use it.
Acts 4:32 says, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”
Understanding this biblical truth, that to have food and clothing was enough for Paul and the early church, we have to stop and ask ourselves: will it be enough for me? If it is, like it was for the early believers, it will change your behavior.
If it really is true, then all the other things you have are things you could give up, give away, sell, or share to meet the genuine need of another.
There is a family in your community that doesn’t have enough groceries for dinner tonight. There is a child who sits in class with your son or daughter who will go to school hungry. There are hundreds of thousands of children in America living in foster care, desperate for someone to love and protect them.
Do we have enough to meet their needs? How much is enough?
Also read my previous post on the first reason for contentment.