{"id":7499,"date":"2014-05-04T02:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T02:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7499"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:30","slug":"the-one-who-has-two-shirts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7499","title":{"rendered":"“THE ONE WHO HAS TWO SHIRTS…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

… should share with the person who has none.””That is the verse they quoted to me!”Last night I listened intently as Daniel\u00a0explained a conversation he had had recently with some “friends” of his in his neighborhood.\u00a0 They were quoting John the Baptist to him (as found in Luke 3) and taunting him:\u00a0“You say you are a Christian, you say you are going to go to seminary, then PROVE you are a Christian.”They were rudely testing the sincerity of his faith with their demand\u00a0that he make\u00a0a willing sacrifice.In the American church, we\u00a0speak of the sacrifices associated with faith in Christ in largely abstract terms most of the time (- if\u00a0we speak of sacrifices at all).\u00a0 We might sacrifice our “time”, our “resources”.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Daniel’s neighbors were asking him to sacrifice his cat<\/em><\/strong>.Not to become someone else’s pet.\u00a0 But to become someone else’s dinner<\/strong><\/em>.[Please note that eating cat here would be sort of like eating squirrel\u00a0in the States in that some Americans enthusiastically eat squirrel – on rare occasions – while most would be turned off by the very thought of it.\u00a0I don’t think Daniel’s\u00a0“friends” wanted the cat because they were starving and there were no other food options, but rather because it was a somewhat novel “food” and they were trying to goad him into an unchristian reaction.]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 “When they said to me that they wanted to eat my cat and that he who has two coats should share one, I told them, ‘I only have ONE cat. And he keeps the rats and mice from chewing on my book.'” They persisted in asking for the cat.\u00a0 Daniel resisted in giving it.\u00a0But in the end, the “friends”\u00a0forcibly took the cat. Daniel came home one\u00a0day a few weeks ago to\u00a0find it cooking in a pot.”So what did you do?” I asked him.”What could I do?\u00a0 As a Christian, I had to forgive them, and I did.\u00a0 I did not want them to become my enemies.”And that was that.With\u00a0his eye on\u00a0becoming a pastor, Daniel will be starting\u00a0a course of study\u00a0this coming\u00a0August with our friends at Emmaus Biblical Seminary just down the road.\u00a0 I think he’s going to do all right…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… should share with the person who has none.””That is the verse they quoted to me!”Last night I listened intently as Daniel\u00a0explained a conversation he had had recently with some “friends” of his in his neighborhood.\u00a0 They were quoting John the Baptist to him (as found in Luke 3) and taunting him:\u00a0“You say you are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7501,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7499\/revisions\/7501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}